Communication Saves Everything (With Andrea Rojas)

This is The Momentum Podcast.

Nearly every issue in any relationship, whether it's with your family, your spouse, or your team can be traced back to communication issues.

Communication within a business specifically can be challenged by any number of things. And the reality is that it's often difficult to determine how to move forward and overcome those challenges. In our organization, we help entrepreneurs develop a system of communication that allows your business to thrive. Some of them shared with us that it saved their relationships with family members and significant others.

In this episode of The Momentum Podcast, we're joined by Andrea Rojas, who gave this presentation to our members at the Charfen Summit. In this presentation, Andrea shared how communication has not only saved her business, but also her relationships. I hope you enjoy.

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. Andrea Rojas: Good. So, I want to talk about I saw the invitation to speak, I was like, I want to share about communication because it was my biggest issue when I joined the Charfen membership. And I'm going to tell you how to save a nine-year relationship, a sister's relationship and a business with 15 minutes a day, because that's basically what has happened because of the cadence to my life. This is my sister, my girlfriend, and we happen to also be business partners. So, it's a complicated relationship from every side because we are together at the house. When we have family meetings, my sister is my best friend and she's also friends with my girlfriend. Besides that, we run a business, so that was getting out of control. It came to a point where my sister and my girlfriend, they barely 680 - Communication Saves Everything (With Andrea Rojas) Page 1 of 5 Transcript by Rev.com This transcript was exported on Dec 24, 2020 - view latest version here. talk to each other because there were so many tensions around the business that it was like, “Oh, I hadn't ... ” And I also had to see her in the family meeting. And I was about to break up with my girlfriend because there was so much fight, so much tension around. We'd been together for nine years and it was like, okay, it's the business or the relationship or none of them, because this is too much. There was so much conflict, so much tension, so much assumptions, and misunderstandings on what was going on in the business that it was crazy. We organize events. Before COVID, we had our live event and the tension around that live event was crazy. It was like running and shouting and a lot of [inaudible 00:03:44] around the organization of that event. So, that's the background. That's how I joined the Charfen membership, and it was really critical. I joined in July ‘19. So it's a long time that I joined, but there was a big problem. I didn't get to implement everything quickly because I was thinking, “Targeted interactions, like daily, are they crazy? Or what are they thinking?” Even though I've heard the podcast so many times, and I've seen some comments in the day that really has to be daily. And I do it twice a week and I do it on a voice note. I'm sure there are ways it works for everyone, but for me, it was like, “No, I don't want to do them.” I wasn't even thinking on once a week, I was like, “Why would I need to meet with the people every day.” My thought at that moment was that we were going to fight every time, that it was going to be like, well, every time we talk is a problem. And now, they want me to talk to them every single day. So for me it was like, “Please don't do that to me.” But the real issue that I found out later, it was that I was not implementing Charfen because of my identity. For me, my identity was, I'm not an organized person. I didn't see myself as a CEO of a business. I didn't see myself as the owner of the business. And as a leader of the business. For me, it was my lifestyle business. And it was me, my sister, my girlfriend doing some amazing things, helping people. And it happened to pay my bills and to give me a nice lifestyle. When people talk to me about targeting interaction, it was like a big no in my life. And the big word that I have been doing in these year and a half has been changing my identity from, I'm not an organized person to I am the digital CEO of my business. I am the CEO of my business. I am the owner of my business. I'm doing this because I want to create a bigger impact. And I want to have freedom as well. Because at some point in my brain, it was completely opposite. Freedom or impact, having a good life or dedicating all the time to my business. It was like, I have to choose. And being in this membership has allowed me to be and realize that I can have both. I can have freedom. I can have a peace of mind and I can have a great team. For me, team was problem. Like, literally. It was like, why would I want a team? I can do everything on my own. 680 - Communication Saves Everything (With Andrea Rojas) Page 2 of 5 Transcript by Rev.com This transcript was exported on Dec 24, 2020 - view latest version here. So, the biggest change has been this, changing my identity as a person, as a digital CEO. We started our weekly TIE on January 2020. And it was only me, my sister and my girlfriend. It was the three of us. And the changes begun to notice and to be shown in our life from the weekly number three, literally things had started to shift. It was like, we start fighting a lot less, just out of the gate, because we have a space where we could talk, where we could discuss what's going on. We could literally go through the whole year, because at the beginning we were not doing yearly. We did them, but they were not really integrated. So for me, it was like dominating weeklies, then dominating monthlies, and now we are dominating quarterlies, and we're having our yearly this week actually. And that has been awesome. But that communication that began on January 2020 literally saved our relationships, because there were three ... I'm going to talk about what were the three things that really impacted our negative communication. And in July 2020, before I tell you these three aspects, I hired my EA. And I cannot tell you what a blessing that has been. I was refusing. I was like, “No, I have to understand everything. Me first. I have to implement everything.” And when she comes, I handed it to her or him, and we have one EA, her name is Cathy and she's awesome. She's amazing. She has implemented most of the cadence in the business. I did it once. I understood the weeklies, but that was it. I was like, the CEO metrics were like, I did it one month and then it totally fell off. I was like, “I don't have time to do that.” But now, I understood that I didn't have to do all myself. It was like, “I'm the CEO. I can delegate these in a good way to someone else that is going to love doing these work that I really don't like.”. So with this understandment that I already did it once and it kind of work. Now, we have a whole year of CEO metrics. We are going into our annual with a lot of data that I can analyze just as the process [inaudible 00:08:44] says that we should. And that has changed everything. Now, we even have ... Like the other day, I got into the daily and they even create Christmas daily huddle presentation. I had nothing to do with it. They even put me at Christmas. And it's these little details that I remember when I heard the podcast and Alex mentioned, like, “My team comes to the daily even when they are on holiday.” I was like, “No way someone is going to the daily on their holiday. It's impossible.” And we are getting that in our team. We are 10 people now, 10 women. We are a woman team, a superwoman team. And the other day, there were two on holiday and they came to the daily, and I was like, “What are you doing here?” And they were like, “No, this is my happy moment of the day. I really enjoy these 15 minutes.” And they love our communication system. So, that has been amazing. What was getting on our way before I joined in July 2019, in 2019, the assumptions. What was happening between me and my partners was that we were having so many assumptions on what was going on, on who was 680 - Communication Saves Everything (With Andrea Rojas) Page 3 of 5 Transcript by Rev.com This transcript was exported on Dec 24, 2020 - view latest version here. responsible of what. It was all based on assumptions. So whenever we got together, of course we were fighting because it was like, “Oh, I thought you were going to do that. Oh, I thought you were going to do that. I was expecting these, not what you did.” So assumptions can killed a relationship. And that has gone ... Like literally the business, the relationship cadence also goes to our house and in our relationship. And it's amazing to not make assumptions. Just talk what's going on. Also, the other thing that was happening before 2019 was we were throwing things under the rug. We were just like, “We're not talking about that. It was uncomfortable, so we don't talk about it.” And it was just hidden and it was like, “Well, it should solve by itself.” We thought that like a miracle, it was going to solve. And we were having aleatory conversations. We didn't know when was the day that we were going to talk. And that was really stressful, especially because the big talks occur during our night at home on the dinner side, when my sister was not there. So that create a lot of conflict because she was like, “You are talking without ... ” My sister thought like, “You're leaving me out of the business.” And then my girlfriend and I were like, “We were taking our personal time to talk about the business.” So it was a huge, huge mess. But these were the three key points of a bad way of communicating: making assumptions, throwing things under the rug, and having aleatory conversations. What happened? What did we change with the cadence? We have the communication now in a consistency and transparent way. We know exactly that on Mondays, we're going to have a weekly. We know that Tuesday through Friday, we're having the daily huddle. We know exactly what are the responsibilities of each one. We have the daily, like the cadence. We were using every table, so we get the percentage of completion of the people that is doing the weeklies. We just hit a 90% completion rate in our weeklies, and we started with 50%. So it has been a huge improvement on how much are we getting done on a week. And I finally have ... I'm still working on not talking about business, but just because I'm so passionate about it, but at least we could not talk about business at home. So that is amazing. And that has definitely saved our relationship and the business. One of the examples, on October, we just had our event. We did a small event with 20 people, and it was awesome because we got to Cancun. And the day before the event, we were on the beach, having fun. My sister, her boyfriend, and me and my girlfriend playing football in the beach, in the pool, having a drink. And the event was the day after. And for me, that was like, “Wow! This has been a huge change.” From almost killing between each other a day before the event to everything is settled down. Our EA was taking care of everything. We have a video guy that had everything handled. Our designer did everything great. So, that was amazing. 680 - Communication Saves Everything (With Andrea Rojas) Page 4 of 5 Transcript by Rev.com This transcript was exported on Dec 24, 2020 - view latest version here. And that's what has happened with the cadence. That's the only thing I've implemented from Charfen, and it's awesome. And my message to you is, don't be scared or don't feel like you are not doing enough, or that you are not taking advantage of the content if you are not going fast. I've been doing it slowly. I mean, doing a change of identity, but I'm committed to implement everything that is in this program. And I'm committed to be in these ... We are on a 3 million run rate, 10 million run rate, because I know we're going to get there. And it's more important to really get through the content, implement it, understand it. I know we are all experts here, we are all amazing entrepreneurs, but what's really important is to know that in the cadence we are new. We are learning the cadence, so it's okay to have doubts. It's okay to be like, “Oh, these monthly ... ” Our first monthly was a total [inaudible 00:14:12]. We were like, “Should we do this? No, we shouldn't do this.” And we went to the video and we check it. The first monthly took three hours, literally. It was like, we were so tired. And then afterwards, the second was a lot better. And the third one, we did it in one hour and it was amazing. So, be willing to learn and be willing to be uncomfortable while applying the cadence because communication is going to change everything. So that's what I wanted to share with you guys, and I hope it is useful for you. Speaker 2: Communication is a powerful, powerful tool for you, for your relationships, and for your business. If you're ready to learn the same systems and structures that Andrea installed in her business in order to experience that level of success, we're ready to help you. If you go to billionairecode.com right now, you'll be able to connect with a member of our coaching team and find out which one of our programs best fits the needs of your business. Let us show you the systems, the processes, the structures that we use to help entrepreneurs communicate effectively and grow their businesses like crazy. Go to billionairecode.com right now. 680 - Communication Saves Everything (With Andrea Rojas) Page 5 of 5 Transcript by Rev.com