The Life’s Work of a Visionary

This is the Momentum podcast. Maybe a little background noise. That's because I am in my car and I'm driving home from our event and I just had an interaction with a visionary that I want to share with you. He said, You know, I try to work with my team and I try to show them what I see and what I'm thinking, and they never see it the way I do. I had a pretty intense conversation with him that I think is going to change his life as a visionary. And I want to share it with you. 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 like I said, I'm just driving home from my event. You probably can hear the car noise. Sorry about that, but I just. I wanted to record this podcast because this interaction is fresh in my mind. And I feel like if you're a visionary entrepreneur or if you work with a visionary, if you're an operator in a business or you're the spouse of the visionary, this is really going to help, you know? So I just had this exchange with one of our members in our event, and he said, you know, I've grown the business that we have to $1,000,000. And now I want to take it further. But I feel like everything is going so slow because whenever I get together with somebody and I explain to them what I'm seeing, you know, and I want to put together a process or I want to document something, they come back to me and they never see what I see. And what I told him was, Of course they don't, because you're a visionary and your life's work as a visionary is communicating the vision you see to the people around you so that they can help you execute it. And they will never see it the way that you see it at the beginning. And so don't ever look at that as a weakness of the people around you, because as visionaries, we are the people who see the future. We are the people who see things differently. We are the people who see opportunity that nobody else sees. So when we explain something to someone, someone for the first time, or when we document a process with a new team member for the first time, of course they're not going to get it right. Of course they're not going to see what you see. Of course they're not going to have it perfect the first time. The plight of every visionary is that we take this trip of going into the future, creating a new reality, coming back to the present, and demanding it becomes real. And when we're doing everything ourselves, it actually feels like it's easier because we can go from idea to execution without any translation. We don't have to tell anybody about it. But as we grow our company, as we get to a million or higher in revenue, we now are going slower. We now are holding ourselves back. We now are holding our contribution to the world back. If we're doing everything ourselves and if we're trying to do everything by ourselves. And so as visionaries, our life's work and this is an ultra marathon, not a sprint. When I say ultra marathon, I'm talking, yeah, this is a 100 mile marathon, not just the 23.2 that everybody else does. This is a lifetime learning experience of learning how to take the vision that we see for a better world, for a better product, for a better company, for a better solution, for a better way to do things and communicating it to the people around us in a way that they can see most of what we see. But honestly, as visionaries, they hardly ever are going to see all of it. And when we have the expectation around of the people around us that they do see everything that we see, that they understand, everything that we understand, we are always going to be disappointed. It's why we're visionaries. We are that small percentage of the population that sees a better outcome, a better future, a better solution, like I said earlier. And so when we feel frustration with the people around us because they don't see it, we see what we see. That is actually a trauma response, a stress response, a way of coping with what's happened to us our whole lives, that we have seen an opportunity. We've seen a different way to do things and the people around us just don't get it. And the sooner that we accept, that's the way things are. And that's because we are so visionary, and that's because we have this strength of being a visionary. The faster we can solve that issue and start actually executing what we want as visionaries and start making a bigger impact and start growing a team around us and having that team work with us to get things done. Because even though at the beginning, when you start working with people as a visionary, it feels slow. It's actually the fastest way to get things done because when we learn how to sit down with somebody on our team and we explain a process to them or an outcome we want in the business and we have them go build a flow chart and build that process in the documentation and they come back. We should expect that it's not going to be 100% right. Of course it's not. And then we learn how to communicate with that person to improve that flow chart and we tell them, Hey, this is where I miscommunicated and this is where I don't feel like you heard exactly what I was talking about. And then they can improve that, that process, that documentation in your company, then they get better at it. And if you go through that process several times with somebody, here's what happens. You get to the day where you explain a process to them. They come back and they nailed it, and now you can start going fast. And as a visionary, one of the disciplines that we have to learn is, sometimes in the short term, you have to slow down to go fast. And it's actually whenever I say that, I think of racing cars, you know, I, I love going to track days. I love racing go karts. I basically like to do anything that feels fast and where I can. Work on improving, on going faster. And in racing cars, there's this concept of setting yourself up to go fast and that means you have to slow way down going into a turn so that you can lay down the power coming out of a turn. And when you first start doing that, it actually feels like you're going slower. But then you look at the clock and you're actually going way faster. So you when you when you're willing to slow down as a visionary, you know, going into this new, different this new change at turn in your business, when you're willing to slow down and fully explain it to someone, then have them go document it for you, then bring it back and go through the process of of explaining where they were wrong, where or where, where maybe they didn't hear you or where maybe you miscommunicated. That is a process of slowing down to go fast because as soon as that person gets it, you can lay the power down and now you can have that person do exponentially more than you could do on your own by understanding you, by hearing you, by seeing what you see. And then when you can do that with multiple people in your company, now you can have multiple outcomes going in the organization that you're not involved in. And so now you're going way faster, even though it felt slower at the beginning. And so if you're a visionary, I want you to just understand something. When people don't see what you see, don't ever hold it against them. Just understand that's your life's work. That's who you are. You're a visionary. If they don't see what you see, that's because you are who you are. And your life's work is showing them how to see what you see. Your life's work is understanding the process through which you can communicate to people around you so that they can document outcomes and get them done without your involvement, so that your vision can grow at an exponential rate than it is right now. And if you've ever felt frustration around not feeling heard, if you've ever felt like the people around you just don't get you. If you've ever felt like you can explain something so well, but the people around you don't understand it, then congratulations. You're one of the few people on this planet who has the skill of a visionary. And we have every one of us felt that way. And when we come to the realization that it is our responsibility to slow down enough so that we can help the people around us understand where we really want to go, that's where we start making the outcomes that we want in the world. That's where we start creating the contribution we want. That's where we start making the impact. And let's get real the income we want as visionaries when we're willing to understand that it's our responsibility. Communication is the responsibility of the communicator. It's our responsibility to make sure that the people around us understand us. And when we slow down enough to make sure that that happens, that's when our businesses, our contribution and our impact absolutely explode. If you are a visionary and you want to help build your team and make sure everyone understands you and document the processes and growing a real business that can exist without you, reach out to us. You should have been at our event today and you can be at the next one. Go to simple operations dot com. Fill out the simple form that you can get right there on the home page. Sign up for a call with my team so that you can understand how we can help you grow your business, not feel like you have to do everything yourself and be seen and heard as a visionary so that the change you want to make in the world actually happens. We can't wait to talk to you. Simple Operations Icon. Thanks for listening to the podcast and I look forward to talking to you again soon.