Communication Creates Peace

As an entrepreneur, the relationships that you develop with your team members, particularly those team members that are closest to you, is going to make or break the growth in your business. In this episode of the Momentum podcast, Alex is going to sit down with three of our members and their operators, and he's going to ask specific questions about how communication has improved their ability to grow and scale effectively, and a few tactical, tangible ways you can apply these concepts in your business so that you can grow in scale predictably.

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. You know, a lot of our events, what we do is we bring up a panel of members and in the past, you know, we kind of we theme the panels because we choose like this is what we want to get across in this panel. And so a few events ago, we had we had a panel of CEOs that were moving into or had achieved passenger status. And so that was one of the most effective panels we have. My team learned our members learned well, today we wanted to do a panel for with both CEOs and operators. You know what what we recognize in this group is that the cooperative relationship is one of the most crucial aspects of growing the business. And we want to we want to highlight that today. We have three sets of owner operators. I'm going to really quick introduce them. We have really excited for this Julie Broad and Angela Jones. And it just so happens Julia's business is doing really well and she's in the breathing studio. So, Julie and Angela, welcome to the panel. Can you guys just real quickly say hi so that we can identify where you are?

Hello.

Everyone, oh, cool, OK, got got Julie ICARDA Julie, now I need an Angela Jones, can you say hi? There we go. Perfect. All right, awesome. So the second and I'm going to do a quick introduction when I have everybody on here. The next one is Robert Heartwell and Dowland Halls. So Robert and Dallen. And so excited to hear from the two of you, this is going to be amazing. All right. And then the last operator and CEO pair is Travis Barker and Cody Griffin and Travis and Cody are in the same square. Thanks, guys. And I only have to move one griffeth. Sorry, Griffin. Sorry. Sorry. We do it all the time. That's OK.

What did I say, Griffin? Yeah, man, sorry about that, I kind to not do stuff like that so griffeth, I'll remember that next time. So just as a means of introduction, Julie, for your team or actually whichever one of them you want to go for, for Julie, but a company I'd like to just have you share the type of company you have, how many people on your team, your revenue and. Yeah, let's just do that for now, so and I'll ask you a question, do I just want everyone to get context on who they're hearing?

Yeah, sure, so we have work, we have book launchers and we're a self publishing services firm, so everything from writing all the way to promotion and we have 14 full time employees just double checking and a couple weeks we'll have Yeah. More.

Yeah. OK, so 14 plus we have somebody starting next week, so 15 and then we have 40, about 40 contractors as well that we work with. We are just now at a one point eight dollars million run rate.

So regulations.

Thank you.

That is fantastic. And Julie, how long have you been in this program? I want everyone to just have a little context. So that is you start giving answers. They're not thinking like, oh, man, we're so far behind. So how long have you been here?

Yeah, just over two years. And when I joined, the run rate was two hundred sixty thousand, just to give you guys a sense. And there was three people on the team at the time.

OK, so awesome. All right. So let's go to the to the next pair here. So Travis can you do the same for your business or type of business that you have number of people on the team revenue.

So we're managed it consulting, we have seven people we're actively hiring right now, and we did eight hundred thousand dollars last year.

Awesome. And how long have you been in the program? Travis.

Oh, just over six months, because I joined right before the summit in September. Like a week before.

Oh wow. That's kind of shocking. I thought you'd been here. I thought you can say like a year in a few months. It feels like longer. That's awesome. Travis. All right. So Dalan and Robert, same thing. So type of company. How many people on the team?

Revenue, little person. And none of us know how many team members we have. We have and gusto like counting people. And I count things like what

I can estimate and you say it confidently.

God, how we work at the collective and we are training the next generation of Broadway. So we work with young musical theater students and they're singing and they're dancing and they're acting and they're their first and their first and team members to employees. And we did two point four million last year.

So awesome. All right, well, thanks, thanks. Oh, and how long have you been in the program or not been here? Five months at this five month.

OK, so Hayley, I'm going to I want you to know this is an operator, CEO panel. I want you like here with me. And I also want, like, the questions you think that we should get answered. Deanna, I'm open to suggestions from you, too, because I know you assembled this panel. I want to make sure we draw out the right stuff. Deanna, do you have a question? Do you think I should start with?

Well, the reason why I chose everyone that's on here is that I've been able to observe what appears to be a very market difference in their relationship. And so if they could just talk to what a difference the cadence has made on their relationship as CEO and operator, that is so cool. I want to start with Robert and Alan, since you have the shortest time in the cadence. So what? Give us an idea of what has it done for your relationship? What is what is getting being here, doing this work done for the relationship between the two of you?

That's an interesting question, because we have worked really closely together for a long time and have developed a really close friendship. So we've had a interesting dynamic between friendship and work relationship. And as we've continued to grow as a business, we've discovered how important it is to really tighten up the CPO operator relationship just as much as we think about our friend relationship and making sure that. It's allowed for a more more vulnerability, more transparency, more support between each other and then I thought we needed because we were such good friends before. Hmm. Interesting.

Coming from a friendship. That's cool. What are we going to say, Robert?

Oh, no. What now is saying about the vulnerability, I feel we've always cared about each other and about our personal lives, but I have definitely seen like a marked difference in caring about protecting ourselves and our self care over the past couple of months and just simply having that 10 minutes before we have our daily huddle together every morning where he has a space to share what's happening in his life. I have a space to share what's happening in my life and then what we're. Knowing that, knowing that we are aligning before we get in front of the team every morning, that has been super, super huge for us and has strengthened our ability to tell each other out, like when your friends. I would not to ask that. Yeah. Go ahead with your relationship between, like, friend friendship and work. If you're going that line between like if I call them out on some shit right now, like. How is this going to affect everything? But we've we've come to a point and not perfect, but we're developing the process and developing our communication cadence so that we're able to strategically call each other out on ways that we need to and support each other in ways that we need to and learning how to to step into my power and him learning how to support me, which is the. If I'm rambling, but I think the last thing to sorry and then I'll stress is the acceleration meter has definitely been huge for us because for the longest it was like a year ago it was just down and and one other person. And now there's like, you know, 10 that show up on a call and, you know, you mean that, you know, I mean, like like it's it's from the heart. When we get in a real space together, you understand humor and but all of that to say what is incredible is that now being able to have language, being able to like, truly verbalize and have words to use to be able to hold each other accountable, but like to support each other. And in our development, it's been really incredible to see how it's not just affected our relationship, more so between, you know, I was talking to I think it's about this once we put the cadence and it made one team member who had just left want to come back and then it made one remember who we were like, oh, this person will never go anywhere. It scared the crap out of them and they ran away. But it's like the best thing that's ever happened because it opened up so much incredible space for. I'm going to spin on it, it's literally for miracle, actual miracles have happened like for months and believe that it's got to thinking about it. I think the language and the words to identify the feelings or the experience has definitely supported that celebration. Peter.

And so awesome. All right. So same same answers from Travis and so same question for you, Travis. And and Angotti. How has having the cadence affected or strengthened or changed or shifted the relationship between the two of you?

So we were kind of similar. I've known Cody now for. Nine years ago, he thought I was when he first married. Sorry, I know language, but really did he? He almost hated me because we both worked for a large corporation at the same time. And he thought I was an arrogant and he wouldn't talk to me for a while. And I was in charge of his training when he first started there. So but since then, he's followed me now through three companies, I guess, for jobs or whatever to come here. And when we joined Charfen, we were in a dumpster fire, to be honest, like I had a partner who was running this thing into the ground. It was an absolute train wreck. I just fired him and we didn't know what to do. The other the coach and mentor had before. We're just kind of like sell, sell, sell money fixes all problems. Alex we talked about this, remember? And it was like I got on this cork's I'm like, I don't have the business that I want. You talked about this a lot. And the very first thing that Nicole told me was like, you need an operator. And I'm like, what does an operator do? And she kind of explained to me what that rule was. And I was like, I know exactly who I want for this job. And it was CODI. And we immediately started with Nicole and Diana. We basically built out the transition to bring him on. And so kind of what that has looked like for our team since then. Me and Cody are kind of polar opposites and our desks are very different to Cody grounds me a lot. And like an example for today, there was something that we had to get done for a customer. There was a miscommunication. And I was frustrated, like, Cody, why don't you do it this way or why didn't this happen? And he took the full brunt of it, which he does a lot for our team. And then afterwards, I was like I was like, I'm so sorry. He's like, it's OK. So he does that for me a lot, which is awesome because it allows me to he he can be my sounding board and take my frustration. So I show up better for my team.

So. The detail that I want to know is, so how long you've been in the program for about six months. So I'm going to ask you, Cody, I actually want to know if you can talk, because I don't think you've ever talked on anyone. But I think you I've seen you like five or six times. I'm super psyched to hear your voice. So, Cody, how has in the past six, six months been in the cadence, shifted the relationship with the communication between you and Travis from your point of view?

Israeli strikes strengthen the communication between the two of us. There are times where as a service, we were basically on call for our customers, so because of my expertize in the field, I get pulled away for doing some of our projects and stuff for our customers. And I know that that can be an annoying annoyance to the Travis. And he checks me when I when I get too focused in the moment with with other things. But he kind of helps redirect me where I need to be. And then I also help relay information to the team through him to as well. That's also kind of been an empowerment that he's given me, giving me more of a voice within the business to be able to translate the concerns that he might have to the team in a less annoyed way. If he has an annoyance, I can translate for everyone else without showing them off as much. You can remove the emotion from it.

So. You know, when I think about the cadence before we you know, our business was chaotic, really, and. Like we knew I knew where I wanted to go and I don't know, I didn't know how to explain that and I'm still struggling with that some, but with the cadences done is it allows me to communicate with my team and with Cody so that we can make sure that the direction we're going, like we don't we still veer off course. I'm assuming partly because of our service and we have all these demands that always pop up, but it keeps us closer in where we need to go. Guys, one direction and the cadence between me and Cody just ensures that we're holding each other accountable, like, hey, we said we're going to do this or this was the to do thing. And it empowers both of us to hold each other accountable, like because we've said we were going to do these things, whereas before. Like no one would ever say, oh, Travis, you were going to do this like that, that just wasn't even.

It wasn't even an option for someone to hold you accountable.

No, and even if I'd asked them to, it still wouldn't happen.

But now that there's a structure there, people feel more safe. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's awesome. So what I want to kind of draw what I heard so that everybody else hears it is that for the two of you, the cadence has created more open communication where you're more willing to delegate. Communication and responsibility to Cody and Cody. It sounds like you feel like you're getting that delegation more completely after the canids was in place. Is that fair? Yes. OK, cool, cool, thanks, man. All right, we'll come back to you. So, so same question for the two of you, Julie and Angela. Angela, you've been in the program for a while. So if you can think back to before and now with the cadence, how has that modified communication for the two of you?

Well, Julie might be the one to answer this first as far as she actually joined the cadence before she even hired me and Angela you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I know DNA helped coach her through like that hiring process for me. So, Julie, if you want to go first, you can. But I don't mind jumping in from from my perspective.

No, go ahead. I mean, I hired I hired Angela for the purpose of implementing the cadence because I took one look at it and said, oh no, not me. So maybe I needed help. So Angela's job was basically here's this Cadey thing. You need to put it in place, really, when you could say that, like I laugh on the inside because I wrote it, I feel the same way about it. Like that's why he's here. But it needs to be there. I just don't want to have to do it. So go ahead, Angela. I'd love to hear what you have to share.

Yeah, I think it's really incredible. I mean, we've always had a virtual team and Julie and I have met the most in person of any of the other team members that I've met. But the cadence has really established a place and a way to build trust between the two of us. And even though I've only met her, what, like four times in person, if that three or four, it feels like more. I feel like I know her so well in certain areas. And we're still learning more about each other as different scenarios and different things arise. And just recently, we're still in the kind of in the midst event. But we had a situation where she had an opinion about something and I had a differing opinion. And that's one of the first times where I've really had a strong, differing opinion. But the cadence gave me the trust in Julie to know that I can voice my different opinion to her and we could talk through it and try to figure things out because of that, which I know in past organizations that would not even have been an option, like, oh, if you have a different opinion, I don't care, I don't want to hear it. But to be able to come to a place and part of that is just Julie's personality herself as a person. But this has also built that trust for me to know, OK, let's work through this. And I think that's really incredible.

That's so cool. So for you, Angela, it sounds like in other organizations, you didn't feel empowered to be able to share how you really felt, but that having it and again, having that process really creates protection.

Yeah, exactly. It was one of those where I was more of a I had to be a sheep. Not that I wanted to be a sheep. I had to be the sheep. Yeah. And this just encourages the opposite. And it really encourages people to to be their true selves, which is just incredible. And it helps grow the organization. Like, I know Julia's got the best intentions and she knows I have the best intentions. And this cadence promotes that tremendously.

So good.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Momentum podcast, if you're ready to take the next step, we would love to talk to you. Go to billionaire COCOM and schedule a call with a member of our team. Let us help you get hyper clear on where you're at in your business right now and how what we do as a company can help you move forward predictably and quickly go to billionaire Koch Dotcom. That's billionairecode.com.