Momentum Podcast: 571

Trust Creates Scale

by Alex Charfen

Episode Description

I just wrapped up another event with Taki Moore in Southern California. I had the privilege to speak to his higher-level board room this week, and I want to share with you all the same message I shared with them – that trust creates scale. One of the fastest ways to grow your business is to build trust with your team, and in this episode, I share with you exactly how. 

When entrepreneurs get to the point in their business where the success they can create alone is no longer enough, that’s when they need a team. Because with a team, we can create a bigger impact, more significant outcomes, and go out and make things really happen for our business. It’s hard to do, but when we admit we need help, we can start building a team and trust with them to scale. Tune in as I share with you the three places you must focus on to create trust within your entire organization. Get ready to show up in a way that will establish not only trust but also massive growth in your business.   

Full Audio Transcript

This is the Momentum Podcast. This week I am in Southern California. I just wrapped up another event with Taki Moore who is probably the best coach for coaches on the planet, and he's my coach. I spoke to his higher level boardroom group this week, which are all million dollar plus business owners. I think all but one is at a million or more, and most of them are at multiple millions. And the message I shared with them is that trust creates scale. If you want to grow your business, one of the fastest ways to get there is to create trust with your team.

Let me explain to you exactly how. 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.

As entrepreneurs, we are addicted to, driven by, we live for momentum. Momentum for us, the feeling of forward progress, making things happen, creating our outcomes and doing what we want in the world is as necessary for us as oxygen is for the rest of the population. And that's not even an exaggeration. When people like us aren't in momentum, making things move forward, creating outcomes, making things happen, we feel massive constraint. It actually breaks us down physically, mentally, psychologically. It makes us feel like we aren't in the right place in the world. And that's why creating momentum and doing more and making more happen and having increasing successes is so important to people like you and I.

And here's what happens. There comes a time in your life where the momentum you are capable of creating on your own simply isn't enough. You get to the place where you want to do more, be more, lead more behind, make more happen, help more people, create a bigger impact, create a bigger outcome. But you end up in this place where you can't do it all yourself. And that's the transition for entrepreneurs like us, where we have to admit we need help, and we start building a team. And here's the challenge with entrepreneurs building a team. You want the biggest foundational problem, the biggest issue with entrepreneurs building a team, I'll give it to you. We all say the same thing when somebody says, "It's time for you to build a team." "I can't manage people. I'm not a good manager. I don't want to manage people. I don't want to have this responsibility."

But here's the issue. What you're in fact saying when you say that as an entrepreneur is that, "I don't want to make a bigger impact. I don't want to make a bigger outcome. I don't want to make the biggest change in the world that I possibly can." Because there's no way you can do it by yourself. The myth of the solo entrepreneur that somehow goes out and create and changes the world is a myth. Entrepreneurs who make massive outcomes in the world, anybody who matters to be remembered, anybody who's changed the world, who's made something insignificant happen, has done so through the help of a team.

And as entrepreneurs, when we get to that place where we are ready to make a bigger impact, create bigger outcomes and make things happen, a team is what will get get us there. And here's how you can create a team where you can scale your business and not have to be a manager and feel like you're moving forward and feel like you're making things happen. Because here's the challenge for most people like us who try to build a team, we do so without ever considering what our actions, what our behavior is going to do to that team.

And so when I say trust creates scale, here's what I mean by that. You, as the entrepreneur, are almost fully and totally responsible for creating trust in between you and the team member that you have. If you fulfill your responsibility, then they can fulfill theirs of being trustworthy for you. And here's what I mean by creating trust with your team. There are three places where an entrepreneur must create trust with their team. Number one, consistency. Number two, predictability. And number three, reliability. Let me explain these to you.

Here's the issue with most entrepreneurs and teams. The first people we will let down in our lives is our team. If we have a meeting scheduled with our team, if we have something that we're doing with them, if we've told them we're going to be available, and typically anything else comes up, and I've watched this for years, if there's a sales opportunity or if there's a call that comes up or if there's a meeting that comes up, entrepreneurs will bail on their entire team for one person.

Here's what I mean by this. First one, consistency. Here's what consistency means. Consistency means you are there for your team in the same targeted interactions, those are what we call meetings, the same targeted interactions at the same time each week consistently. You show up in the same way. They see you in the same way. You're there over and over again. In and of itself, you being consistent will build trust.

Let's look at the flip side of this coin. When you look at most entrepreneurs, like I just said, the first meeting they will cancel is with their teams. So what does that mean? When you tell your team you're going to have a meeting with them, when you set it up on the calendar, when they anticipate that it's coming and it gets canceled at the last minute, here's what they feel. They feel insignificant. They feel like they don't matter. They feel like the meeting didn't matter. They feel like you've wasted their time. They feel like you've just shut them down. There's all types of triggers in setting up an expectation and then letting your team down. You actually trigger every memory they have of being let down, of being triggered, of not having somebody show up for them. So consistency is the first way you build trust with your team.

The second way, I said predictability. Here's what I mean by predictability. It's not just showing up for the targeted interactions. It's being predictable in the targeted interactions. In my next podcast I'm going to talk to you about how you become a passenger in your meetings, not the driver, and so you can act even more predictably once you're in passenger status. And again, I'll talk about that in my next podcast. Don't miss it because passenger status is game changing. I brought it up at the mastermind I'm out here speaking at and everybody was like, "Wait, we want to talk more about passenger status." But that's the next podcast, not this one.

See, predictability is when you go into meetings, and the meetings are run the same way each time. That's why we call them targeted interactions. Targeted interactions have an intention. We know why we're going into the meeting. They have a choreography. There's a step-by-step process for exactly how we do this. They are primed so people know about the targeted interaction. They know it's going to happen. They know when it is and there's a clear outcome. We know exactly why we're going out of the meeting, what we're going to come out of the meeting with. This level of predictability makes it so that anyone in your business at any time can go into a meeting and understands what they need to know to be successful. So consistency is shown up for all the meetings in the same schedule. Predictability is following the same process, doing it over and over again, making sure that you're showing up the right way and you are getting things done.

And then here's the last one, reliability. And here's what reliability means. If you say you're going to do something for your team, do it. I know that sounds pretty logical, and I know that sounds pretty simple. The reason I'm bringing this up is because even though it is absolutely both logical and simple, the vast majority of entrepreneurs that I've worked with have a really hard time meeting commitments to their team. When they say they're going to do something, they often have a challenge actually doing it. And I watched this over and over again. I'll give you an example.

I live by this and I do everything I can to live up to being consistent, predictable, and reliable for my team. But this happened to me even today. This happens to me. I do everything I can to be consistent, predictable and reliable. But this morning, Haley actually had to reach out and let me know that yesterday I forgot to turn in my weekly report to my team because I was out here in California with my family spending time with everybody. We've had a lot of stuff going on in our family, and I totally forgot. I forgot it was even Sunday. I got so wrapped up in being around my family, I didn't even know what day of the week it was.

So my way of remaining consistent, predictable and reliable is I make sure that I'm doing it. And then if I miss like I did today, Haley reaches out as fast as she can and makes sure that I get back on track. Because here's what I know about managing the team and here's what I know about managing human beings now for decades is that when you are consistent, predictable and reliable, you build a culture of consistency, predictability and reliability. And here's what's incredible. Your team shows up the same way.

See, if you're in a culture where you show up for every time you tell them you're going to be there, if you're in a culture where you say you're going to do something and you actually do it, if you're in a culture where your team meetings are consistent, where outcomes are consistent, where people know what's expected of them, your team will show up in a way to support that culture.

Now, on that same token, if you're in a culture where you're setting up meetings with your team and canceling them, if you're in a culture where you're in meetings and you're taking them off-track and handling things that weren't supposed to be in the meeting, they become completely unpredictable, if you're in a culture where you say one thing but you do another, here's what will happen, and this is 100% of the time, your team will adopt and support that negative culture.

And so if you want to scale your business, if you want to grow with the team, if you want your team to help you grow faster than you ever possibly could on your own, it's actually not as hard as we think. See, as entrepreneurs, if we are consistent, we show up on the scheduled times at the right time and show with our team, if we are predictable, we follow a similar process to get a result every time, and if we are reliable we say we're going to do something and we do it in our team, these are very simple things to do.

For entrepreneurs, they can be somewhat difficult. It's hard for us to put meetings on our schedule. It's hard for us to make commitments on our calendar for the rest of the year. It's hard to do all of those things. I get it. But I want you to know this week I was in front of million dollar plus business owners, and if you want to scale a business to seven figures, then eight figures, then nine figures, you will have to compromise in some way, and you will have to at least show up and guide your team and grow your team. There's minimum requirements to have a business and you at least have to be in the room. You can't outsource all of it.

But if you do show up consistently, predictably, and reliably, here's what will happen. You will build a team where there's trust. You will build a team where your team shows up to support you. You will build a team where your team has leverage because they know they're working in a place where when we say something, we do it. When we make a commitment, we actually keep it. And when we say we're going to make something happen in the world, we actually go out and do it. And you being more consistent and building trust on your team will actually make your team lean in harder the goals, put more effort into their positions. It will give them clarity, confidence, which creates a massive commitment to get even more out of every person on your team. And all you have to do is show up in a way that builds trust. As a CEO, when you are consistent, predictable, and reliable, you become a massive engine for the scale of your team.

If you're ready to start building your business and you want to install some of these systems so that you can be consistent, predictable, reliable, and the CEO you've always known you could be, go to predictablebusinesssystems.com. Answer a few questions from my team and set up a call with Jeremy on our team. Let him spend a little bit of time with you and show you how we can help you grow predictably. Be consistent, have reliable outcomes in your business, and grow the team you've always known you should. Predictablebusinesssystems.com.

Thank You For Listening!

I am truly grateful that you have chosen to spend your time listening to me and my podcast.

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With gratitude,

Alex

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