The Most Important Resource for Visionary Entrepreneurs

This is the Momentum podcast. I recently saw a video that's getting a got a lot of attention from somebody who used to be in one of our memberships. And they were talking about how as an entrepreneur, once they had built a team and they were growing their business, there was a period of time where they had to go heads down and work every single day without a break and just get up. Not work out. Not even eat. Not even take care of themselves. And just work all day long, seven days a week to get what they needed to get done. And they were successful. And. The video made me uncomfortable because. Here's the reality. You can work like that and be successful as an entrepreneur. In fact, he's not wrong. You you can work heads down and work all day. And it may create a success for you as an entrepreneur. But here's the issue, is associating working head down all day and not taking care of yourself and not even eating with being a successful entrepreneur is a broken association. It is a challenge association. It is an errant association. In fact, the most important resource we have as visionary entrepreneurs is time. 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. Should 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. There's two major ways you can use your time as an entrepreneur. There's all kinds. You can do a combination of this. There's other ways to use your time. But there's two that I want to highlight for this podcast. The first one is the one that I just described. Heads down, working all day. Making it all happen. Not eating. Not taking care of yourself. Putting all of your time, effort and energy into your business. And, you know, this is this is actually an association to success that a lot of people in entrepreneurial circles make, that it's the hustle, it's the work. It's going head down. It's doing it all. It's making it all happen. And. There's a reason we make this association because people who do this are successful and not. Not always. But people who do this become successful. It's like a lottery pool. There's a whole bunch of people doing this. And then someone become successful. And that's the person we pay attention to. It's like multilevel marketing. You know, the person who's on stage is the one out of a thousand is getting this six figure a month paycheck. But so many people out there just aren't making it yet or not getting that six figure a month paycheck. I don't want to pick on multilevel marketing. I know it's a great place for entrepreneurs to start and learn a bunch of stuff. But what I'm saying is we look at the success as the rule rather than the exception when it comes to heads down, working all day, making it all happen, not taking care of yourself. We think that's the way that you become successful. And I want you to I want you to understand something now after after working in my companies, after watching hundreds of entrepreneurs run their companies and coaching them and helping them grow, there's a totally different way to grow your business. Instead of head down working all day, you can actually step into visionary, step into the the archetype of visionary and create the future with less and less effort from you. And when I say this, here's what I want you to understand as an entrepreneur. If I just made you uncomfortable, if me saying less and less effort from you, made you uncomfortable, I want you to know, for the longest time I thought the same way I would think, Oh, man, I got to change this podcast. This person is going to poison my mind with this belief that I don't have to work hard. Because as entrepreneurs, so many of us work hard and we hold on to this concept that hard work will get us there. It's like, you know, it's almost like a mantra for us. And it's like I said, it's this huge belief system in the entrepreneurial world. But here's what I also want you to know is that addiction to hard work, that getting up every day, even after you've created some success, getting up every day, working seven days a week, not working, not taking care of yourself, not doing any self-care, just committing 100% to the business and living for the business. A lot of people would tell you that's a trauma response. And after the work that I've done on myself, I can tell you that for me, in a large way, it was a trauma response. It was, you know, the trauma that I experienced as a child, the noise that I grew up with as a child, the the lack of association I had in social circles, the challenges I had in schools, the challenges I had with my own family made it so that I wanted to have that massive distraction of all the pressure and noise of working seven days a week all day. That's where I felt comfortable. And I hear entrepreneurs often, especially young entrepreneurs, say, But Alex, I want to work all day. That's where I feel comfortable. And I don't argue, especially for the ones that are not in our membership. But when somebody says, Alex, I feel compelled to work all day. What do you think about that? Or Can you help me? Or I'm having kids and I want to be able to to change how I'm behaving or I just got married and I want to spend more time with my wife, but I feel like I have to do everything right bit for my business all day, every day. And, you know, my wife's not into it. By the way, sometimes entrepreneurial couples get together, they both feel this way, and they both do this, and they're both in a trauma response, perhaps, you know, depending on how you believe this is this is what I've observed and what I've come to believe. And what I share with those entrepreneurs is that that's not the only way to make this happen. That's not the only way to do this entrepreneurial thing. You know, one of the best examples of this, and when I look at it is Richard Branson. I mean, look at the effect that that guy has on the planet. Recently put an aircraft into space or a spacecraft, I guess, in the space and, you know, runs hundreds or is involved in it with hundreds of businesses around the world constantly innovating, putting new things out there, just launched a cruise line. There's so much that Branson is doing. But if someone asked Branson one on one if he works hard, he actually will tell you he creates massive amounts of space for himself to think and to visualize and to come up with the next thing. I mean, that's what being a visionary is all about. When you're head down working seven days a week, punishing yourself without self-care, without taking any breaks, without eating, you are not in that visionary space. You've actually created a somewhat abusive job for yourself. And I don't say that to be mean. I don't say that to. How do you judging yourself? I say that to have you think about this different way of doing this, because when you step into visionary, when you create space and time for yourself. You know, I was in a learning experience recently with my friend Dave Thomas, and he teaches like visualization and magic and bringing things into your life. And he said, you know, if you're working too hard, you're probably not that great at magic. And what I heard was, if you're working too hard, you probably need to step into visionary. You need to step into the visionary archetype, because here's what visionaries do. We get up in the morning, we travel into the future. We create a new reality. What we want to see happen in the world. Then we come back to the present and we demand it becomes real. And that demanding it becomes real can be sitting down and working seven days a week, all day without taking a break. Or it can also be learning how to create a plan that a team can understand. It can also be learning how to create a system through which you communicate with a team so that your team understands how to execute and they get out in front of you and you're not the biggest bottleneck. And you can create your vision in the world without doing all of the work yourself. It can also be creating a structure in a process within your company so that the infrastructure of the company, the people, the process, the policies, the projects that are done, those are all created systematically without you having to drive every one of them. And when you do those things. When you have that plan, when you have that communication structure, when the the the building of your company is happening automatically, it's happening through a process, is happening to restructure. You have more time to actually be a visionary. Because here's something I want you to know. You can't create a massive vision without time. You can't clarify that vision without time. You can't lean into that vision and understand what you really want without putting time into it. And the more intentional you are with the time, with your time. The greater that vision becomes and the greater your output becomes in the world. And when you look at Branson, he is such a good example of that because he takes time and he's on his island. He's kite surfing, he's working out. He has he's living the life like he is, living his best life and still making a massive impact in the world. And I'm near certain if somebody was to tell Richard Branson he could quadruple his wealth or quintuple as wealth or or have a bigger effect on the world if he just spent seven days a week head down working. My vision is he'd laugh at them because here's what he knows. And what entrepreneurs like me who've been around know is that that is a limited time success strategy. Because entrepreneurial addiction is real burnouts, real stresses, real distress. It puts on your body as real. Having, you know, so many entrepreneurs get sick with conditions that can't be diagnosed and they're called things like it can't be diagnosed who can't be treated like doctors will say, we think you have chronic fatigue or chronic fatigue or Lyme disease or Hashimoto's or or some other thing and. In my perspective. It could just be stress. It could just be the pressure and noise you're allowing into your life because of the way that you're working and the way you're trying to do it all yourself. And here's how I can hold that perspective firmly in a place of integrity and tell you that's how I feel because of the hundreds of entrepreneurs that we've worked with who have given up the seven day a week, all day working or dawn to dusk or too many hours or doing it all themselves. And the symptoms of those diseases that were difficult to diagnose or couldn't be diagnosed and can be treated went away. It happens in our membership all the time. Someone will stand up and say, I haven't had these symptoms for this long and it's the first time in this many years. And when it happens these days, I'm not even surprised anymore. I'm thrilled. I celebrate like crazy, but I'm not even surprised anymore because I've seen it so many times. And so ask yourself, which way do you want to do this game? Which way do you want to play this game? You know, entrepreneurs are the only people in the world who get to make up all the rules ourselves. We really do. We get to make up the rules for how we live, for how we work, for what we want to do. And then we build the structure around it, we build the reality around it. And so if head down, working all day to make it happen sounds attractive to you. I don't want to fault you for that. I get it. I've been there when I was in my twenties. If somebody had told me this, I think I'd have a hard time hearing it. I probably would have been scared to hear it and would have taken me a while to hear it. But if you're one of those people who wants to step into visionary and create the future with less and less effort and see the change that you want to have in the world without having to do it all yourself. I want you to know not only is it possible, but the reality is that's how it really happens. Because no one ever made a massive impact on the world by themselves. The myth of the solopreneur who changes the world is just that. It's a myth. Those of us who have gone before and changed the world and those of us who are important enough to remember those who mattered to be remembered. They did it with other people. They did it with a team. They did it with help around them. And you can, too. And so if you're ready to step in a visionary and create the future, it's one of the things that we help people do. We will help you lead your business, not from a place of doing it all yourself, but from leading from a passenger seat. And if this is something that you're interested in, getting some help with this podcast, if you listen to a few times, it will help you change your behavior. But if you want more help and you want to go faster and you want to move into this place of running your business from a passenger seat where you're not driving at all, but you're directing at all and you're in charge of it all, and you're making it happen with less and less effort. Go to simple operations dot com. Answer a few questions for my team on the survey. Sign up for a call with a member of my team and let us tell you how we help visionary entrepreneurs around the world. Go from 7 to 8 figures routinely while they put in less and less effort and have more time for themselves and more time for really what's important in their lives. We look forward to talking to you. Go to simple operations dot com and fill out the survey and connect on a call with my team and remember, head down. Working all day is one way to do it, but it is absolutely not the only way. Head over to simple operations dot com. We look forward to connecting.