Momentum Podcast: 730

Loops and Spirals Created By Not Having a Strategic Plan

by Alex Charfen

Episode Description

Your addiction to new is preventing you from achieving mastery.

I see this happen to entrepreneurs all the time. We will go to a conference or an event, then we come back to our team and tell them all about the next big thing that is going to change everything in our business. Then we give them just enough time to get started on this new project before we come back to them with another new thing.

Alex Charfen, a business growth coach who helps entrepreneurs grow and scale their businesses, gives practical, tangible, and actionable tips that you can implement into your business right now.

So often, we change direction so often that it becomes impossible for our businesses to grow to the next level.

There is a better way.

By creating a strategic plan, you give your team clear outcomes and a commitment to an execution period where you do not deviate. This creates clarity, confidence, and commitment from your team, and creates a massive amount of momentum for you along the way.

Your business has the potential to change the world, and the only way to see that potential become a reality is to implement a strategic plan. If you're ready to learn more, go to Predictable Planning Systems to get started.

Our entrepreneurial journey doesn't end here! Be sure to check out our Facebook Community filled with entrepreneurs just like you who are getting into momentum and building world-changing empires Charfen Community

If you are an entrepreneur who is listening in and you can relate, then be sure and head over to Momentum Planner and gain access to one of the most requested business tools to grow and scale your business in any market condition, even in this one.

Full Audio Transcript

This is the Momentum podcast. Today, I'm excited to jump in on a topic that we talk about all the time and our coaching memberships, a topic that comes up all the time, it is the challenges and even the loops and spirals that are created by not having a strategic plan 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. So let's just take a step back really quick. This is one of the biggest problems that I see in business is that, one, there's no strategic plan in the business. And so here's what happens in a business where there's no strategic plan because you haven't created a plan, you haven't figured out where you want to be and reverse engineer the way to get there.

If you have a business without a strategic plan, then it's really easy to change things on a day to day basis to throw things off to to go to a conference, to come back and tell your team. We call this shooting all over your team.

You go to a conference, you come back and say, here's what we should do. We should do this, we should do that. And you have all these things that you bring into the business and you want them executed right away. Well, I'll share a quick story from last week. So last week was our event. We do our events four times a year. They are our delivery events for our memberships. They're incredible. We have people from all over the world who join these broadcasts. And the next one that's in September, we're going to be doing still virtual. And then December we get to see human beings again. We're going to do our event here in Texas in person hybrid. So it's going to be broadcast and in person. And last week in our event, we were with the highest level group, which we call accelerator people in that group. They're really close to a million dollars are over a million dollars in business. And we were talking about having a strategic plan and what it does for the business. And I made the point that having a strategic plan keeps your team focused, keeps everybody in momentum. It lets people know what the rules are. It lets people know what the outcome is. The goal is. And even in this group, I got the question Alex, what if what if we are we go to a conference and we come back to our company and there's just something we have to get implemented.

We just we feel like it's the thing we need to do and we want to do it right away. And my answer was going to a conference, coming back to your business and implementing something that day or the next day is a five figure business habit that is a five figure business decision. And the person who was asking it was kind of taken back. She was like, what do you mean? And I said, well, here's what I mean by that. If you have a business that is so not established and has so little going on and has so little happening in it, that you can come back from a conference and implement the next day an idea that you have you have a five figure business. Now, if you pull that moving a seven figure business, let me explain to you what's going to happen in a seven figure business. We're going to multi six figure business with the beginnings of a team. Here's here's what happens.

You come back and you say, here's what we should do. We're going to change this tomorrow. Like, I have to do what I feel. This compulsion to do it. I always tell entrepreneurs, your addiction to new is robbing your momentum and your success, because here's what happens when you come back to your team and you say, here's what we're going to do. We're going to change everything right now. We're implementing this tomorrow. Well, something was happening in your team. They were doing something. You were doing something in your business. So in a multi six figure or seven figure plus business, you're now derailing everything that they were doing. And so you derail the activities that were happening with this new thing. And here's what happens. The team asks, why were we doing the thing we were just doing? You know, yesterday before you came here, I was working as hard as I could and giving you the effort, putting out time, putting out energy, putting out effort to make this thing as well as I could, or to do this part of the job as well as I could.

And then you come in today and you tell me it's not important. We have this new thing we have to do. And so what that immediately does is it tells the team member that what you had them doing was not important and whether they consciously or less than consciously realize this, here's what happens. You're breaking trust. You are breaking trust in a significant way as this person's leader, as this person CEO, as the person who they're taking their cues from on how to behave, what to do, what productivity means probably 40 hours and in some company. Forty hours or more a week.

And so you break trust with this individual who you're counting on to help you achieve your goals, and why do you break trust? Because of the lack of patience, of seeing an idea and having to jam it into your business that day rather than taking a step back and following a process like I would recommend in this case, the Charfen process, like our five step process for predictable execution, will help you in this situation. Because the next question I get is, OK, well, what if we have a really great idea? How do we get it implemented in the business? Well, you take a step back and you get together with your team and you say, hey, there's this new thing I want to do. Let's analyze when we can do it, when should we do it? How is it going to affect anything else that we're doing? How's it going to derail projects? Maybe we don't do it today. Maybe we'll do it in three weeks, maybe do it next month. Maybe we do it next quarter in the next quarterly plan. And then you prioritize. You say, OK, we analyzed everything. So now we're going to prioritize this in the list of priorities we were already doing. So it's not going to happen this second, but it's going to happen in the next week or two or like I said, in the future. Then once you've analyzed the five step process, I'll just give it to you so that you have to analyze, prioritize, commit, execute and then renew. Let me break it down for you. So we already talked about analyze. Then you're going to prioritize and put this new thing you're going to do somewhere in the priorities of what you already had. Then you commit. And here's what you commit to. You can commit to doing what you were already doing, to continuing the process, to not derailing everything, to moving towards this new thing, because now it's in a prioritization list. And then when it comes time you execute this new thing with the proper analysis, the proper prioritization, the proper commitment, now you execute it like crazy with your team. And then in the renewal process, you gather up all the data of what happened. Then you go right back to the beginning and you start analyzing again to see what your team should do next. When you have a process like this, here's what happens. You don't derail your team, you don't break trust. You don't make them feel like what they were doing wasn't important. Because here's what happens when you, as the CEO, come in and derail what somebody was doing with an immediate idea that needs to be there. Your addiction to new. Here's what happens. You don't just break trust. You cause massive anxiety, massive anxiety. Human beings within a business and human beings in general want to be given an outcome and then an opportunity to accomplish that outcome. And if somebody is in the middle of a hundred yard dash and you say stop, that's not important anymore. We're even worse. If somebody is in the middle of a marathon and halfway through you say stop, that's not important anymore.

You cause massive confusion and anxiety and frustration with the members of your team because they were doing what they wanted to do for you or what you wanted them to do. They were doing it for you. And if you have true believers on your team, that is the worst scenario. Like, let me explain what I mean by this. So if you go out and you hire the right people and there are cultural fit and they love your market and they believe in your mission and they're doing everything they can to help you, and then you do this to them.

You're not just hurting the business. You're not just hurting their position. You're not just hurting their productivity. You're hurting the movement. You're hurting your members, your clients, the people you serve. And if you have a true believer on your team and you pull a move like completely derailing them and sending them in a different direction because you felt like it, you break trust at a foundational level because they love your market as much as you do and you're threatening the movement that you and your team are creating. And so instead, this is the proper way for us to do what we need to do as entrepreneurs. And I kind of explained it earlier. I just want to give you the clear steps. One, you reverse engineer, where do you want to be? What do you want this project to do? What do you want the outcome to be? Then you ask yourself, what are the steps to get there? You reverse engineer those steps. You can you connect the long term outcome with what you're going to do on a day to day basis.

And then you execute with your team with momentum and you move things forward fast. See the challenge with the addiction that we have the new with chasing shiny pennies or picking up shiny pennies or chasing shiny objects, is that when we have a team that's already moving in a direction, when we have a team that's already creating productivity, we derail them by changing the rules on them. Thanks for participating in this podcast, Cleo. So if you'd like more information on how we help entrepreneurs build teams and create outcomes and grow that business predictably, go to billionaire dotcom again. That's billionaire go dotcom. Sorry for the background noise with my dog and I look forward to seeing you next week. "

Thank You For Listening!

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With gratitude,

Alex

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