Momentum Podcast: 576

The Charfen Process

by Alex Charfen

Episode Description

In this episode, I’m going to share with you the strategies we teach entrepreneurs to achieve massive growth. Entrepreneurs from all over the world have applied our concepts and grown their business like crazy. Our systems work, and there’s a reason. We show them exactly how to grow their business through our simple 5 step framework called The Charfen Process. 

This episode is a must-hear for CEOs. Because as a CEO, when you go through a process like this, you start to build more trust with your team. When they see you follow a process over and over again that get’s a consistent result, you actually appear and become a better CEO. Our process has changed people’s businesses, but what we’re most proud of is this process changing people’s lives. The people we have worked with have come back to us and said by using this consistent process, their personal lives have gotten better, their health has improved, and their relationships have improved. As the entrepreneur in charge, when you have a clear process that works over and over again, and you begin to trust it, it makes everything in your life easier.   

Full Audio Transcript

This is the Momentum Podcast.

My team and I have gotten to the point where, if we're working with an entrepreneur that has a viable business model and they're willing to apply our strategies, in almost all cases, we get massive growth and the business starts making a bigger impact and in most cases, it makes a much greater income. There's a reason. We use a clear, five-step process, the Charfen process that changes people's businesses permanently, and it's a lot simpler than you might think. But hardly anyone applies these five steps in their business for consistent exponential growth.

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.

My team and I are in a really enviable position. We've actually created a track record now, a long, long track record of testimonials and of success stories of people who have applied our concepts and grown their businesses like crazy. There are now dozens of stories of entrepreneurs who have grown million-dollar businesses 2, 3, 400% in a year, or in 18 months working with us. We're now having the same impact on entrepreneurs that are in the six-figure range coming to us at 3, 4, or 500,000 and within a year, of being at well over a million. Our systems work and there's a reason. We follow a discreet process in our coaching that we show our clients exactly how to grow their business and it's simple. It's five steps, but when you apply these five steps, with the frameworks that back them up over time, your business will grow consistently and you will be shocked at how much you and your team can do.

Here are the simple five steps. It's analyze, prioritize, commit, execute, and renew. Let me share with you how these five steps will absolutely transform and change your business and help it grow over time. Let's start with our first step. Analyze. This is a step that most businesses leave out when they're creating any kind of outcome or project or what they're going to do next. During goal setting, especially if you go to an event for goal setting, I can't stand most processes because you know what they leave out? They leave out analyzing where you and your team are now. They leave out looking at where you are and what you're actually doing. They leave out saying, "Where is the business right now? And through an analysis, where does the business need focus?" See, one of the biggest challenges that we see in businesses is that, prior to a project being taken on or prior to outcomes being created or goals being said or things being added to what the team is doing, there's rarely any type of analysis where you can see where the business is.

And here's what I mean by analysis. We use the five core functions. You can go back and listen to my podcast called The Five Core Functions. But for every business we work with, the analysis is a process of looking at lead generation, lead nurture, the conversion of a lead, delivery to a lead, and then resell, retention, and upselling that lead. Those are the five core functions of the business. So when somebody works with us, we analyze those five core functions consistently over time. Because when you look at those five things, lead gen, nurture, conversion, delivery, retention, resell, and upsell, you will ensure you're looking at your customer life cycle. You're looking at what they experience coming through your business and you will consistently grow the company.

Now here's the challenge with so many business systems out there, so many goal-setting processes out there. They leave out any type of analysis of where things are so you're working based on feel and what you think happened in the past few months. When you add analysis to not only understanding the five core functions but where you are on your critical number, your financials, it allows you to understand where you and your team stand, so that you can move on to the next process. So first you analyze to understand what you should do or what you could do, what are the possibilities you and your team could go through.

And then the next step in the process is prioritization. This is a big step that most companies leave out. In our systems and frameworks, we show companies how to create hardcore prioritization. Not once or twice during the year but over and over again. In fact, here's how prioritization works when somebody is working with us. The challenge that we see most of the time is that entrepreneurs want to get everything done all at once and right away. And they start typically with a to-do list of a ton of different things to do, and they try and get them all done as fast as they can, or they do things like, I'm going to do the easy one first or the hardest ones first.

And here's the challenge. Once you build a team, prioritization like you did when you were on your own no longer works. In fact, once you build a team, prioritization with the team is infinitely more important than anything you're prioritizing on your own. Because once you've built a team, that means the momentum you are creating on your own is not enough. So now you're creating it with a team. That means that everyone on the team needs to know what they should do and when they should do it.

So here's how our system works. We don't just prioritize once a year and say, "Here's what we're going to do in the year." In fact, we have a process through which the companies we work for, or sorry, work with, they prioritize on an annual basis. Then they look at their quarterly targets and prioritize those. Then they take those quarterly targets and they ask, "In each month, what can we get done in these quarterly targets?" So each month, there's another prioritization. And then each week, there's another prioritization when everything they decided to do in 30 days is now carried over into a weekly outcome sheet, a weekly commitment sheet so that they can get it done.

And that process of prioritization at the annual level, the quarter level, the monthly level, the weekly level creates this massive hardcore cram down to the point where you and your team are doing the highest priority outcomes every time that you commit to getting something done. So, this prioritization process is asking, "What should we do first and how should we do it first?" and asking the right questions in the right timeframe. See, at the quarterly level, you should be looking at projects. At the monthly level, you should be looking at what part of those projects are you getting done? At the weekly level, you should be looking at the tactical items that lead to those projects getting done.

When you have this type of prioritization over and over again, here's what happens. Your team has a superpower of prioritization, getting the right thing done at the right time. Here's what I can tell you about a business. If you execute a profit, a profit, if you execute a project perfectly at the wrong time, chances are, it's not going to matter. That's just reality. You can crush a project but if you do it at the wrong time, it's not a priority when you're doing it, it's probably not going to matter. So, prioritization is an absolute game-changer.

Going through this process of understanding what you should do, changes everything because the next step is committing. And it's a step all by itself. Because here's what commit means. Commit means that you actually create a strategic plan that you can commit to. See, the commitment level in most businesses is, "We committed to a big, hairy, audacious goal," which please, don't even get me started. Or we committed to a project or we committed to working every day. But here's what, the companies that we work with make a much stronger, much greater commitment. See, they go through the prioritization process and then they create a strategic plan, which is a real plan that the entire team understands. And then when I say commit, I mean commit. See, there's no crazy goals on these plans. There's no unachievable outcomes. There's no big, hairy, audacious anything. When you commit to a plan, here's what we're saying. And in our program, the way that we coach, every 30 days, you commit to a plan and then every week, you commit to achieving part of that plan.

But that commitment every 30 days to that real plan means that here's what's going to happen. We're going to leave that plan in place for 30 days. We're not changing the outcome for 30 days, so the team can be confident for 30 days. You look consistent for 30 days. By committing in a real way to clear expectations, here's what happens. Your team, now that they have the priorities and they're committed, can actually achieve what you need to achieve to move the business to the next level. In business, in relationships, in life, 99% of problems are communication issues, and those communication issues are typically because there were not clear expectations around what's happening. When you commit to a plan, the team understands it, you remove that frustration of people not really knowing what's going on. You remove the possibility that people don't really know what's happening.

And the other big complaint in entrepreneurial companies is, "We don't know what's going on," so there's not enough communication. The other one, "We change directions too often." So in our system, when you commit, you commit. Of course, if there's emergencies or something happens or something falls out of the sky, you can adjust. But most of the time, you're making a commitment and moving through with it and making it happen.

Once you commit, the next step is execute. In our business, we use 30-day execution periods and weekly commitments to get them done. This is where most teams start. I've just gone through analyze, prioritize, commit, and then execute. What happens in most small businesses is they just execute. The entrepreneur has an idea one day, they come in, pull the trigger, and execute as fast as they possibly can. Now, this is where not only where most teams start, this is where most teams lose. Because when you start on a project without clear expectations, when you start working as a team without clear expectations and a plan, when you haven't prioritized, here's what happens in so many businesses. The project's unclear. You end up trying to push it forward by talking to people way too much. There's way too much followup necessary. You're constantly micromanaging your team. You're stuck in transactional management where you're telling people what to do, checking that it got done, and telling them what to do again. And in most businesses, that's just how it is.

But when you go through analyzing, prioritizing, committing to a plan, and then you go to the execution step, here's what happens. Set up is there. Set up is everything. It doesn't matter how incredibly you can swing a golf club. If the head of that club is 10 degrees off, the ball's going to go in the wrong direction. So, you can execute a swing perfectly but if the setup isn't there, you're not going to get the result you want. And so, because we set up execution in a way that every person on the team understands, the prioritization has been done, we've analyzed what's going to work for the company, and execution has actually been planned. You're now set up to succeed. And as your team begins to execute, here's what happens. You actually literally immediately feel the change in the business. Because you've analyzed what you need, prioritized what should happen first, committed to that plan, and started to execute, you actually feel real results in the business. You feel progress, you feel that forward motion, you feel things happening. Let's get real. You feel momentum. And isn't that what we're all in this for?

And then once you've executed, you've taken that 30-day period, you and your team have worked through it, done what you can, gotten as much as you can done. Then you renew. And here's what that means. On a monthly basis, you go back and you analyze again. You prioritize again, you make another commitment, you execute again, and you renew again. And you follow a consistent process that you and your team get used to. See, in fact, when you follow a consistent process like this, what happens is you set up a level playing field for your team. So now you and your team can understand what you're really capable of. You and your team can understand what types of outcomes you can really drive. You and your team start to really know what is possible in the company that you have, and the business that you're driving today.

Now, if you do it any other way, you're leaving a lot to chance. If you're not going through the process of analyzing to know exactly what you should do and what the business needs, prioritizing so that you're putting things in the right order and everyone in the company agrees, committing so that there is a commitment not just from you but from every member of the team to get this plan done, then executing in a clear way with planning done already where everyone feels confident and clear and they're fully committed to the plan. You will get massive results and then you can come back and renew and start the process over again.

See, this process has changed people's businesses, but what I think we're most proud of is that this process has changed people's lives. See, as a CEO, when you go through a process like this, here's what immediately happens. You start to build more trust with your team. Because when they see you follow a process over and over again that gets a consistent result, you actually appear and become a better CEO so you build trust with your team because they should trust you more. And when you follow a process like this, time after time, you actually start getting along with your team much better. It gets easier to work with the people around you to get the outcomes you want.

And what's most important for me is the people we have worked with have come back to us and told us that by using this consistent process, their personal lives have gotten better, their health has improved, their relationship with their spouses, their kids improves. Because as the entrepreneur in charge, when you have a clear process that works over and over again and you begin to trust it, it makes everything in your life easier. And let's get real. People like you and I, when we analyze and prioritize and commit to something and we start to execute and we go out and make it happen, here's what I know about you and me. If we have a plan that we're clear on, if we have a process we trust, if we have confidence in what we're doing, we will stand on the accelerator pedal and forget that we have a brake, and grow into momentum and make massive outcomes in the world.

But if we're procrastinating or holding ourselves back or not doing what we know we should do or avoiding the things that we know will move us forward, here's what I always say to that. See, as entrepreneurs, we beat ourselves up. As entrepreneurs, we blame ourselves. We feel like we're broken. We feel like there's something wrong with us but here's what I want you to know. If you're procrastinating, if you're holding yourself back, if you're not doing what you should, here's what I believe. I believe you don't trust your plan. I believe you don't have clarity about what you really should be executing. I believe that you don't really have the clarity, confidence, and commitment to make it happen and grow your business. By following a process of analysis, prioritization, committing to your plan, executing the plan, and renewing it, everything in your business, and like I said earlier, there's potential for everything in your life to change for the better.

If you'd like to know more about the Charfen process and hear firsthand how it can apply to your business, go to PredictableBusinessSystems.com. Answer a few questions for my team and set up a call with Jeremy. We don't do sales calls. We only consult. We have a negative pressure sales system. You will never be asked to buy something from our team. In fact, if you've never experienced a sales process like that, go to

PredictableBusinessSystems.com. Sign up for it and check it out. You'll be shocked at how we've grown our company month after month without using any high pressure or scarcity tactics. Go to PredictableBusinessSystems.com. Check it out. I'd love to help you and your team grow your business faster, make a bigger impact, and finally start earning the income you want. PredictableBusinessSystems.com.

Thank You For Listening!

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

Please feel free to reach out if you have a question or feedback via our Contact Us page.

Please leave me a review on iTunes and share my podcast with your friends and family.

With gratitude,

Alex

Scroll to Top

Simply enter your email address below to get instant access to the Free 90-Minute Predictable Business Growth Training.

We hate spam, so we won't send you any...

We are excited to share the Predictable Planning System with you.

Please enter your email address below so we can share more valuable content with you in the future.

I hate spam, so I won't send you any...