Before You Execute, Do This

This is the Momentum podcast.

Understanding what the next step is for your business can be a challenge. It can often be difficult to know what people to hire, what processes to build, what projects to execute that are going to create the most momentum in your business. The reality is that as an entrepreneur, we can get stuck trying to figure out when it's time to execute and when it's time to do things like documenting processes. On this episode of the Momentum podcast, Alex discusses this concept with an entrepreneur on a live coaching call. Alex uses one of our most foundational pieces of content to solve this problem and help you understand how you can get out of being stuck and build momentum in your business.

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.

Here's what's interesting, I'm going to answer this in a weird way, I'm going to back up to before that conflict, back up to before this conversation, a process versus progress and tell you that where that starts is in the lack of analyzation analysis.

And you're an engineer. You know this. So in an engineering, if you're approaching an engineering challenge, the first thing you need to do is analyze the situation, understand what your parameters are, put that data into the equation, and now you can start solving this fair. Yeah, I mean, that's that's just how it works.

Here's what's interesting in business we often forget we need to analyze, look at where we really are, get the data, then make decisions. Instead, what we often do is we look at the present situation forward and then say, how do I make the decision in the moment? And here's how we answer process versus progress versus execution versus people. Because it's not just, you know, you're bringing up two things. Do we install process or do we just make it happen? But there's other questions. Do we hire someone? Do we create a project? Do we document this process? Like what are the things that we do?

And the way we coach that is we show people how to analyze the five core functions of their business. And that drives the decision of whether you are going to put a process in place. You're going to document or put a project in place, or you're going to hire a person. And the five core functions.

This is the most foundational content. We teach the five core functions of a business or some of the most foundational content are simple. It's lead generation, leave, nurture. Conversion delivery, retention, reselling EPSO. And people say, like, wait, you didn't say operations, there's no finance in there, there's no that. Yeah, that's that's why we do this, because we analyze every business we work with exactly the same way based on the customer experience. How many leads are you generating? How are you nurturing those leads, getting them ready to purchase? How are you converting those leads, delivering to those leads? And then are you retaining them where they don't return? Are you up selling them where they buy again? And are you reselling them where they buy something else from you and or sorry that was wrong. Retaining that or you retain is retention reason. So you retain them, they don't return. Are you reselling them a product again and then are you selling them more. And so if you analyze your business and say Legian and nurture conversion delivery retention reason I'm selling, here's what you'll find in Legian. We need a better process spelled out so that we can execute in nurture. We have the process now. We just need to go execute that process. Like if you start analyzing that there, here's what you'll find.

And this is what our clients the answer is we want our clients to come up with is do you need a new project to solve something to make it better to improve it? Do you need to document a process so that it stops breaking so that it's clear, so that it becomes law? Or do you need to hire a person who's going to help you improve this? It's always one of those three. It's a process, a project or a person.

And so here's what happens when you consistently evaluate your business using those five core functions. Here's what we do to give you some insight into how we coach and how our my personal company is run is we look every 90 days. Where are we on those five core functions? We score ourselves and then we spend the next 90 days improving it. And then each month we do a check in like, hey, let's look at the five core functions. Are we moving in the right direction? So on a 90 day basis, we say, here's where we are. These are the projects we're going to execute on a monthly basis. We check in and say, are we improving where we had deficit?

And when you consistently analyze lead generation, lead, nurture delivery or conversion delivery retention, we sell in Excel every quarter.

You will create the projects that build the business. Every quarter you will document the processes that secure the business and every quarter you'll bring on the contractors. The help, maybe even team members that will help you solidify the business.

So you do an analysis of your business and you say, we're doing great and Legian nurture conversion, we're having some operational issues and delivery. Do we need to be do we need what is the issue or we're doing great on Legian nurture conversion. We don't really understand our profitability. We're having some issues with numbers. We need to fix finance so that those five core functions. Here's here's what I want you to know. And for everyone listening, don't get distracted. Don't get distracted.

Because what happens is a consultant or a coach or an event or an information product is going to tell you something other than those five things are important. And the reality is, if you drive your business based on those five things, you can get to one hundred million dollars and never look back. And we've how we've helped companies actually do that go from millions to tens of millions, go from hundreds of thousands to multiple millions. And the way that they do it is by consistently focusing on those five things.

And when somebody from the outside says, hey, do you need to work on operations or H.R. or finance?

My question always is, is it improving the five core functions? Because if it isn't, why would you ever spend resources there?

And as a result, here's what I see a lot of entrepreneurial businesses, especially the ones that come to work with us, they come in and it's a three million dollar business and they have a KMO, a CFO, a CTO. They have all these C-level people. And I'm like, why, why? Why is this happening?

And the reason is that somebody outside has said, hey, you're at multiple millions. You need to have all these people.

And then they come in and we end up having to readjust and make changes and realize that all of that's not really necessary, because when you analyze the five core functions, those people are kind of standing off to the side not doing anything. Especially in a couple of million dollar business.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Momentum podcast, are you ready to start building momentum in your business? You can get access to the five core functions business tool right now by going to Charfen Dotcom for Igor that o r e get perspective on what you should be doing right now in your business to create success. Go to Charfen dot com forward slash core to get started.