Release Background Noise

This is the Momentum podcast. So this weekend was awesome. I will share with you why in just a moment. And I also want to share a story that came up from a friend of mine about just how much having background pressure and noise in his life was. Holding him up was slowing him down. And how quickly his life absolutely exploded once he got it out of the way. 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. So this weekend was absolutely amazing. I had the opportunity to go with a couple of friends of mine. Katie and I had the opportunity to go with a couple of friends of ours, Brian and Hayley Bird, who own canopy management. They are a Amazon agency, and they took us to the Formula One race and it was absolutely extraordinary. You know, I don't follow any sports other than Formula One. There's only 20 teams. There's only there's only 20 players. There's only 20 drivers. So it's it's good. It's easy for me to keep up with. And I love fast cars. I do some racing myself. I like to go to track days. So Formula One is like the ultimate racing out there. And so it was absolutely incredible. And Brian and Hayley had amazing seats in a hospitality suite and all kinds of other stuff. So it was a lot of fun. And once the race was over, we were waiting to get a ride and waiting to get out of the Circuit of the Americas. And Brian and I were having a conversation that I asked his permission yesterday that I could share. I just always want you to know I'm never breaking somebody's confidence. And Brian was Brian's a brilliant entrepreneur. And when I say brilliant entrepreneur, he's like such it's such a small percentage of entrepreneurs on the planet even think like him or have his perspective or see things like he does. He's just extraordinary. And he was sharing with me a story of when he was younger, a business that he owned, where he set up a glass repair company outside of car washes and hundreds of cars would come through a car wash. And he would have people working there that were looking for any type of a chip in a window or a crack in a window, and they would fix it for you for free by going through your insurance and making a quick claim and then getting the windshield repaired for you, which is a pretty amazing deal. And Brian actually pioneered that that process of being at a car wash have seen the cars of bringing people in. And this was when he was a much younger entrepreneur. I think he said he was 19 or 20 and he had a business that was doing $30,000 a day with a very high margin. So when I say that Brian's a brilliant entrepreneur, I don't know a lot of entrepreneurs that are in or that are at that age that can see such an incredible opportunity, build the processes around it, build a team. I think he told me at a team of like 20 or 25 people that you can make $30,000 a day with good margins. It's just extraordinary. And then kind of as an aside and laughing about it, Brian goes, and then I didn't realize that I had to pay taxes on all of that, and I didn't realize how taxes really worked. And he shared the story with me of how he ended up with a massive tax bill, not just a tax bill, but penalties. And he had, like so many of us, I mean, I relate to the story because I had some really bad accountants and advisors when I was younger. Brian did as well, and he ended up in a place where he was audited by the IRS, had massive just pressure and noise from having that agency after you if you've ever been there. I have. When I was younger, it can be one of the most stressful situations in your life. It's like it's not it's just as stressful as a lawsuit only it's like being in a lawsuit or being in a conflict with all of the power of the U.S. government. And I don't care what anybody tells you about the US government. To me, the most powerful organization there is the IRS. Like, let's remember, that's who brought down Al Capone, not the FBI, not the CIA, not not any not Homeland Security, not the Secret Service, the IRS. And so it is incredibly challenging to have any conflict with that organization. And here's what Brian shared with me so candidly and vulnerably yesterday, was that I just in the last number of years is when he finally got everything resolved with the IRS. It was a huge issue, multi six figures. It could have been multi seven, even sneaking into the eight figures. And he finally resolved everything. And this is exactly I'm paraphrasing, but this is very close to what he said. He said, you know, yeah, you know, we got that taken care of a few years ago and finally paid it off. And that's when everything really started exploding. That's when his company canopy went from just a couple of people to now over a hundred people. I'm actually going to speak to their leadership team this week. They have a 17 person leadership team. I'm really excited about meeting all of them. And he said, you know, that's when it went from an idea to an actual business and then from a six figure business very quickly to a seven figure business to an eight figure business. You know, and I would go as far to say as when it comes to Amazon agencies who do what Canopy does, they are the best. They're the number one in the market. And it was so interesting because Brian went on to say, he said, you know. I had this thing in the background, this conflict with the IRS, this issue with the IRS, that that hadn't really gone away. And he said it wasn't till I paid it off that I realized how hard it was to carry that around. And how much it was affecting everything. And it makes so much sense to me because when I work with entrepreneurs, one of the things that I always talk to everybody about is, you know, if you want to create momentum, if you want to move forward, if you want to achieve what you're capable of and you in a lot in your life, there's two things you can do. You can add new activities that are going to move you in that direction, and I definitely recommend that. But you can also look at your life and say, where is the pressure and where is the noise coming from? And how do I make it go away? How do I get to the point where I'm not feeling the same level of pressure and noise that I am right now? How do I get to the point where I feel more comfortable, where there's less weight, where, you know, I can move forward faster? If you listen to my podcast for a while, you've probably heard me use this metaphor before, but if you have a powerboat that is in the water and you want to get it up and hydroplaning on top of the water, if it's carrying a ton of gas and a ton of people, and there is all kinds of stuff in it and it hasn't been cleaned out for a while. And, you know, several summers worth of things are in there. You can get it out on the water and you can hit the accelerator and it will hydroplane eventually. But it's going to take a tremendous amount of energy and more time than it needs to. And on the other hand, you can take that power boat and take everything out of it and strip it down until it's lightest weight and it'll actually pop up out of the water on its own. And when you hit the accelerator, you're almost immediately hydroplaning. And as entrepreneurs, we're the same when we carry around too much weight, when we carry around too much conflict, when we carry around too many unfinished things like issues with the IRS, it slows us down. It makes it take way more energy and way more time for us to reach the momentum that we have potential for, for us to start moving things forward, to go in the direction we want to achieve the things that we want, and if we're willing to take them away, even those things that have been around for a while and have been in the background for us, for Brian, this is you know, this this issue was a couple of decades, I think, like maybe maybe a little bit less maybe like in the somewhere between 14 and 18 years or something. But going back and forth with the IRS, trying to get the right information, trying to get them to see and see the right, you know, things that he needed them to see. And then finally negotiating the out. And it's one of the longest conflicts I've ever heard of with the IRS. I've certainly been in one that was multi-year, but one that anniversaries a decade is massive, and I can't imagine how difficult it was to carry that around. And when one Brian said, you know, once this was done, that's when everything really started moving in the right direction. I wasn't surprised at all. And so this is how you can apply this story. This is how you can apply this lesson to your life like I'm going to. And I like I continue to like I like I do obsessively is to think about your life and where is there pressure and noise coming from? Where are things in your life that are not giving you momentum? Because if there if there's a person, a place, a thing in your life, something you're repeatedly doing that is not giving you momentum, then it's binary. It's taking it away. And so how can you put those things in the right the right order? How can you get them out of your life? How can you stop doing them as much and then stop doing them entirely so that you move in the direction and reach the full capacity and capability that you were meant to reach. And as an entrepreneur, you know, for me, one of the most important things in my life is that I live up to my potential, that I do what I'm capable of, that I do what I can. And I know that it's through the consistent lowering of the pressure and lowering of the noise around me and not allowing it to sneak in and making sure that I'm doing the right things for myself, taking care of myself, eating right food, staying hydrated, and being around the right people. That creates massive momentum for me. And so for you, taking inventory of the people, the places, the things in your life that are not giving you momentum. And I want to give you permission to be ruthless and say, I'm not going to do these things anymore. I'm not going to accept these things that slow me down. I'm not going to accept these things that lower that boat in the water. I'm not going to accept these things that make it so much harder for me to get into momentum. And I assure you, you will see your life change, just like Brian did when he finally got that out of the background. Make an inventory of the things that are there for you, start moving them out of your life and you will see a massive shift in the direction that we both know you want to go. And if you're interested in getting some help in your business to lower the pressure and noise to be able to scale faster. By working less to be able to have the right process, structure and routine in place so that your business gives you just as much momentum as anything else that you do, and you can start moving in the direction that you want. Reach out to us. You can go to Simple Operations Icon and right there on the home page you can sign up for a call with my team and we'll share with you the programs we have that helped Canopy management go from just two or three people a few years ago and an idea to an eight figure business with over 100 team members leading their field and absolutely changing the world. And I'm not trying to take credit for anything that Brian and Hailey have done. They are extraordinary entrepreneurs. And yesterday Brian actually told me, you know, I want to thank you for all of the systems in the structure that you helped us with, because I don't know that we would be there without those processes and those structures. And so if that's something you're interested in, go to simple operations dot com. Sign up for a call with my team. We're looking forward to talking with you and take the permission. Look at your life, figure out the things that are giving you momentum, make the assumption that they're taking it away and start putting your focus where things are going to move forward. And in times like today, where there's a lot of insecurity in the market and really in any time as an entrepreneur, we should guard our focus like our life depends on it because it does. If you want to sign up for a call, go to simple operations dot com and thanks for being here today. [00:00:01][0.0]