Joe Troyer 0:43
Hey everybody, it's Joe Troyer, and welcome to another episode of Show Me the Nuggets guys. I'm super, super excited, for today's episode, it's gonna be a little different. And what I mean by that is I brought my coach here today one of the coaches that I have in our business and that's making a huge impact today to share what's been working so much in our business. So guys, without further ado, I want to welcome with warm hands. Alex Charfen to today's podcast episode, welcome to the call Alex.
Alex Charfen 1:15
Dude Joe, it's so great to be here with you, man. Thanks for having me.
Joe Troyer 1:18
Yeah, man, thank you so much. So um, real quick before we dive deep. Give everybody real quick, just a five minute background on how the heck you stumbled in this world that we find ourselves in today.
Alex Charfen 1:31
You got a job. So I don't have the typical background like most online marketers do. I actually I'm 47 years old. So I've been around a while. When I was 21. through some series of fortunate events, I became a consultant. I spent my 20s and early 30s working with the Fortune 500, Global 100. I had clients like Fuji, Microsoft, Belkin, Logitech, large international computer and consumer electronics businesses. And we were a consultancy that helped with challenges like nobody ever called me and said, hey, everything's going great, we're gonna hire you. It was always like, dude, we should have called you six months ago, we got serious issues, we need to turn around, we need help with a product, a product line, a division, a department, an area that's not working, and we came in and, and, and move things in the right direction. And that's where I spent most of my career. When I met my wife, I got out of that business. And we went into real estate in the early 2000s. By the way, in a book that would be foreshadowing. We weren't just in real estate. We were actually in Florida real estate.
So Katie and I grew a massive real estate, actually, four massive real estate businesses. We had acquisitions, property management, development and rentals. And we we grew like crazy. And then 2007 hit and literally it was like the wheels fell off the world in Florida things things, you know, they didn't slow down, they literally stopped in one month to the next It was like everything stopped. And we ended up going bankrupt. Well, even when I say that today, it's been so long, I say it today and I still I get this whole physiological reaction, but we went bankrupt, we lost everything. And that was 13 years ago and I can honestly say it was probably the best thing that ever happened to us. It didn't feel like that in the moment. But we went bankrupt. We, as we were going bankrupt, we were losing dozens of properties. We have property throughout South Florida, and we were looking at the foreclosure paperwork, and I started seeing an opportunity. I shared it with Katie, she saw an opportunity.
We created a product our first online or our first information product was called the Certified Distressed Property Expert. It was in the real estate industry. To give you a summary on how it did we introduced it in late 2007. In 2011, we hit just under $10 million. We were the 21st fastest growing company in the country. In 2013. We had 46, 47,000 members and the US Treasury said that we as an organization helped pull forward the foreclosure crisis, five to seven years. So we, our tiny little company was able to make a massive impact in the foreclosure crisis, and out of that was born, the business we ran today, run today. So in about 2011, or 12, our real estate clients were held asking for help on growing their businesses. That's something I had spent most of my career doing.
So we started putting together systems and frameworks and process and that has evolved. And in 2016, we closed our real estate business started the business we have today and today we help visionary entrepreneurs who can't turn it off. We show them how to get the help, they need to build the systems and structures and processes to get predictable results in their business. And the change we want to make is that visionary entrepreneurs can actually build a team, get the help they need make a massive impact and build an empire and we will know we're a successful company when visionaries around the world are using our stuff to go out and change the world.
Joe Troyer 4:47
Yeah, awesome stuff man. so powerful. The first time I heard you break down that success statement, I was just like, like hair blasted like I'm going like 100 miles an hour down the highway like whoo! So excited, and it spoke to me so much. I love I love that statement. Alex, I'm going to kind of guide you through this call to make sure that we get the most out of today. You've given me a crazy impact in in one of my businesses, and I want to make sure that we that we pull that out and unpack that a little bit. But before we do, can we talk about the the entrepreneurial personality type because for me, that's like where it all started, right?
I got introduced to to that concept into that little book that you have, and that really, really opened my eyes and then to the podcast. And man, I think I think I was only following your podcast for probably about two weeks and I was binging man binging bad. And then we enrolled in the program. So it was like it was a really short timeline. So I want to kind of repeat if you will, that process for everybody. I want to walk through the entrepreneurial personality type. And then I want to talk a little bit about the the podcast some of the takeaways that I've seen from that. And then I want to jump into kind of what you do day to day inside the program.
Alex Charfen 6:05
You got it, Joe. So the entrepreneurial personality type is kind of the the summary of my life's work. You know, my whole life when I was when I was younger, I always felt different than the other kids around me. I always felt different than the other people around me. I you know, I am profoundly different. I probably had something to do with being an immigrant to this country. And as a kid, I had a Latin American accent. So I looked white, but I sounded Latin American, so I couldn't hang out with the white people. I couldn't hang out with the Latin Americans. Oddly enough, I ended up having a lot of black friends. So I was I was very different. Um, I was always kind of like, I felt like I was on the outside looking in.
And there was this thing in the world called success. And I felt like success was way over there. And I was way over here and we were never going to meet. And so I started reading personal development books when I was really small, like 10 or 11 years old. And as a kid reading personal development was so hard because if you read enough personal development, it starts arguing with each other, have you ever been through that Joe? where, like, you read one book and you're like, yes, this is the way you read another book. And it's like, that's not the way you read the third book. It's like those two books aren't the way like what the heck. So it was so frustrating. I started just studying successful people. So I read biographies and third party accounts and stories and anything I could get my hands on around successful people, and not just business people. I wanted to understand successful people, like why did people stand out?
You know, why is Picasso the painter we remember when there was thousands of painters around at his time, you know, why is Socrates, the thought leader that we remember for thousands of years? Or what? Why is it that there's these people throughout history that stood out? And so I obsessed over them? And here's what's interesting, if you look at one or two stories, they look completely different. You'll get 15 or 20. You're like, Man, this is so different. You get up to 30 or 40. It still looks different. And then there's this point where if you study and that's enough successful people, patterns start to show themselves they start to emerge. And what I saw was, there's this commonality with wildy successful people, the people who matter to be remembered the people who we remember.
They're so similar. And here's what I believe is the commonality with all of us is that the entrepreneurial personality type is that tiny percentage of the population that gets up in the morning, travels into the future, imagines a new reality comes back to the present and demands it becomes real. And that means it could be a painting that means it could be a business, a screenplay, a story, a change in the world, a building, whatever it is, but we are the human beings that say, This isn't good enough. The status quo isn't where it should be. And when I look at the rest of the world, you know, here's what I see, I see a population that strives for average, and clings desperately to maintain the status quo. And the entrepreneurial personality type gets up every morning and says,
How do we crack this open and make it better and make it bigger and do things in a way that support more people and make a bigger contribution. And so the way that we define the EPT the entrepreneurial personality type, is that we are physically sensitive momentum based beings that are highly reactive to constraint. And what I mean by that is, I think that you and I live for momentum like the rest of the world needs oxygen. And when we feel any type of constraint, it can make us reactive and make us appear like we're challenged, it can actually make us have challenging behaviors.
You know, the dichotomy of entrepreneurs is that Steve Jobs built what is probably the most valuable corporation of all time, as far as human contribution and innovation. And he was also known as a pretty challenging person to be around. And people used a lot more descriptive terms in that to describe him. But the fact is that double sided sided coin of the entrepreneur personalities, that is who we are. And what I found was, the more pressure and noise we have in our lives, the more challenging behaviors show up. But the more we lower the pressure and noise, the more we appear talented and gifted and like we absolutely can change the world. And that was my journey with the entrepreneurial personality type.
Joe Troyer 9:57
Man, that's so awesome. So much to unpack there. But I don't want to get stuck so
Alex Charfen 10:03
Joe let's just put this out there, if we need to do a second episode we totally can.
Joe Troyer 10:08
So what, what what do you see as kind of the 80/20, if you will, of lowering the pressure and the noise, and then I want to kind of get into the momentum side, because both I feel like they're so important. And if you don't, if you don't attack both, you're not really going to get anywhere. So I know a bunch of things that I've done through your program to help but I'm curious what you think are the top ways to lower that pressure and noise?
Alex Charfen 10:33
You know, Joe, I think that the first thing is a realization of the following. So I want like, I want everyone to let this watch over them like feel these words don't just hear. Here's what I know about the entrepreneurial personality type is that every one of us has had a period of time in our lives. Where we are pursuing something we're going after something we can see this tiny little light at the end of the tunnel and and the people around us doubt us. We might even partially doubt ourselves, but we see this tiny light little light that compels us towards it, and we can tell ourselves towards it and we move it towards us. And we keep going. And even though people around us are like, hey, that's a train, get out of the tunnel. We keep going. And we step through that light. And that is who, what, when where we become who we are. I think every one of us has been through that protracted period of difficulty to have that massive wind. Joe, have you been there? You know exactly what I'm talking about.
Joe Troyer 11:24
Yeah, multiple times.
Alex Charfen 11:26
I was gonna say the same thing. For me. That is a story that repeats itself in my life. You know, it's almost like the hero's journey. We are always pursuing that light at the end of the tunnel. But here's what happens. Here's the issue for people like you and I is that and if you're listening, see if this resonates because we have been through those periods of massive difficulty to get the result we wanted. What we often equate in our lives is if we have massive difficulty, we will create success. And so the problem for people like us is that we tolerate far too much. And so the first part of lowering the pressure in noise in our lives is understanding that we have a natural tendency to tolerate far too much.
Here's something that I here's an equation I just want to share with you. A million dollar business owner tolerates far less than $100,000, business owner, a $10 million business owner tolerate far less than a million dollar business owner 100 million dollar business owner tolerates far less than the $10 million business owner. And here's the big one, the billionaire, billionaires are that tiny percentage of the population that tolerate nothing that we do. And that's why they're billionaires.
And so when I talk about lowering the pressure and noise in your life, I'm talking about the people, the places the things in your life, if they're not giving you momentum, they are taking it away, and we need to guard our momentum like our life depends on it because it does. And so go through your life inventory and say, is this helping or hurting? Am I getting momentum or is it taking it away? This is binary guys it's on or off. And what we do with our members and what we do to help people create massive success, is we show them the systems and structures to build businesses, but the first thing we do is we radically lower the pressure and noise for them. And sometimes just that is the catalyst to massive growth. Yeah,
Joe Troyer 13:08
that's so fantastic. So, at invisible PPC and Momentum, let's say we're about three, three months into installing the framework, which we'll talk about in a little bit into Invisible PPC. And so far, it's been awesome. We still got a long ways to go. But immediately, man, just sharing the waterfall with the team and getting everybody on the same page, and everybody understanding all sides of the business. The clarity that that brings is just absolutely unreal. For for the audience, and anybody who isn't familiar with, with the framework, can you kind of walk us through the cadence, the clarity, the waterfall, whatever you think, has to go whatever you think you have to go through to kind of get the 80/20 out of that, right like the high level picture and what people get out of the framework.
Alex Charfen 13:58
Okay, you got it. So we have This framework called the Charfen Cadence. And the cadence encompasses a system through which to run your business. But in order to make the cadence make sense, I want to share a framework with you we have this this this comparison of transactional management to transformational leadership. And, you know, Joe transactional management is like, it's every entrepreneurs nightmare. And whenever you talk to an entrepreneur who's like, Oh, I tried hiring people and it didn't work out, then you ask them questions, what you will almost always find is it was transactional management. Here's what transactional management is. You tell somebody what to do, you check that it got done, you tell them what to do, you check that it got done, you tell them and it's brutal. In fact, you can hear it in the language of entrepreneurs, when you ask them like, Hey, how's it going with that new person? They're like, Oh, man, I have to tell you the same thing over and over again. It's so frustrating, we're having a really hard time. You know, as entrepreneurs, we can't stand that management spot. It's It's full of constraint for us. So the way to get out of that transactional management nightmare that's like one of those negative loops we get into as entrepreneurs transactional management, here's how you get out of it. You move to transformational leadership.
And here's why we get results with people so quickly, when you go from telling people what to do and check into that got done and telling them what to do, again, to transformational leadership, which is giving people clear outcomes. Joe, you mentioned the waterfall. The waterfall is a strategic plan where everyone on the team understands exactly where you're going. Just like on a football team, like everyone knows you are aiming at the Hall of Fame, the Super Bowl, winning the season winning the next game, like today, your workout is going to get you there. You now have that Super Bowl Hall of Fame because you have your strategic plan. And so you give people clear outcomes. step one, step two is you coach success, like you coach them, you say, here's where we're going. I'm going to give you support to get there.
And if you do those two things, you get leveraged results. So when you're using transactional management, they don't grow, you don't grow. You might get some stuff done, but you're gonna want to pull your hair out and go back to doing it all yourself. I call it the quitting fantasy. every entrepreneur who's ever had a team has the quitting fantasy, it's the morning you wake up and go, you know if i got rid of everybody just went back to doing it all myself, this would be so much better. Well, the way you get over that is you get people clear outcomes, they're responsible for what's going to happen, you coach their success, so they will not fail, you get leverage results because they learn along the way you learn along the way, then the next thing you set out to do, you're going to get there even faster. And so that is the key to the Cadence System is that we move you firmly into trance or transformational leadership. And then we put you into the passenger seat, which is a real way to run a business.
Joe Troyer 16:32
man that's that's so difficult the transformation and moving to that. I feel like in so many businesses, I've tried to do that and ultimately failed. And I think it's so counterintuitive, because you have to slow down so much in order to speed up. It almost feels like at times like I'm not in momentum because I'm slowing down so much. What would you tell somebody that's feeling like that like I'm getting bottled that good because I'm trying to make that shift to trans transformational leadership from transactional?
Alex Charfen 17:06
Yeah. Man, Joe, such a good question. Because here's what happens to entrepreneurs all the time. In fact, this happens to some of our highest level members, we just had four members in the past month have their first million dollar month, no, and that's two months have their first million dollar months. And almost every one of the three out of the four have actually come to us and said, have gotten to a point where I don't have anything to do. So I feel like I've lost Momentum. And so we can actually work people out of stuff to do but here's, here's what I think you're describing, Joe, when you're early on your entrepreneurial journey, you are doing everything. Like literally, in order to be successful in your business, you must do everything and you must do everything with a high sense of urgency.
Well, here's the problem. Very few people get past that point. Very few people actually succeed at doing everything in starting a business and getting it off the ground. Well, the problem is those who succeed are now psychologically conditioned to do everything. We have this conditioning that says If I'm not doing everything, then I'm not going to be successful. And so one of the biggest challenges with moving from doing everything to getting the help you actually need so that you can have a much bigger outcome is recognizing that as you grow, the sense of urgency changes, the sense of sense of urgency goes from, what do I need to do today? What's all the list of things I need to knock out to? How do I set up a better future and a better plan and a better execution system so that my team actually grows?
You go from what are we doing this week to what are we doing this year? You go from I think I know what's going to happen today to I'm successfully predicting months I'm successfully predicting quarters, I think I can successfully predict next year. And when your business starts to become predictable like that, where you know what's going to happen. You actually start hitting these surprises were like, Hey, we think we're gonna grow 2 million in the next quarter. We actually grew three. We just had a member who, Daniel Rosen, he runs a company called credit repair cloud. He's an amazing entrepreneur. And Daniel joined us a couple of years ago, they were around three or 4 million.
They're now, they had a predictable plan to get to 8 million this year, they're at 14. And so when you start predicting forward, it feels like the growth is slower because you're not in all of the tactics and you're not in all of the frantic frenetic energy. It actually you have to retune your body to say, hey, it's okay not to panic. It's okay not to be in fight or flight. We're building the future. We don't have to fight right now in the moment. And that is a huge transition for entrepreneurs. It's really it's hard because at the same time, we're making that transition. we're transitioning from me to we were transitioning from I do most of it with support to Now I'm going to show other people how to do most of it with my support. And so this is a massive transition. But any entrepreneur who's ever changed the world has gone through this transition and started supporting the members on their team.
Joe Troyer 19:51
I wanna follow up well on something that you just said, What do you believe in kind of the the guru business and no support system and just one guy off by himself versus kind of a team built business. What's your point of view?
Alex Charfen 20:03
I feel sorry for all those guys. I really do. I do, Joe, you know, cuz here's, here's the thing, like, you know, I actually talked to one of them, I think last year, who had like a $1.2 million business, just him and a VA, somewhere overseas. And I feel sorry for him, but I feel even more sorry for its members for his clients. Because here's, here's why, here's why. Here's why I think you should be very wary and very, very cautious about working with someone who hasn't built a team. Here's what it takes to build a team, your frameworks, your systems, your structures have to be bulletproof.
Because if they're not, as you put them out to a team, and you have somebody else to teach them, they're going to fall apart. Your systems, the way that you teach has to actually work 100% of the time, whether you're there or not, in order for it to work with a team. And so when you look at the contrast of the single person who's out there on their own, to somebody who's built a team built an infrastructure has support. If you work with that single person, you're putting all your eggs in one human being basket, if you look at an organization where their support where there's a team where there's there's an infrastructure where there's actual real frameworks that have happened over and over again, that's where business really shifts. And so I'm cautious about those those, you know, independent laptop lifestyle type type businesses, because I really think they're kind of a myth, Joe, like, I've talked to a lot of them. And it feels interesting to be able to say I do this all on my own, but the reality is who really wants to, you know, let me share a quick, quick story with you. So last year, my mom passed away.
It was like one of the most brutal things I've ever been through Joe, so do you still have both your parents. you want so you know what I'm talking about? It's like hitting a brick wall, isn't it? So dude, my mom passed away. And I called Haley, my director of operations and I said, Haley, I'm taking some time off. And she said when are you coming back and I said, I'll let you know. And I didn't talk to anybody in my business for about four weeks. I checked him With Hayley, after four weeks, I told her I'd probably be back soon, I took almost two months off. You know, my business grew during that time, my members were taken care of, we did more than than we did. And I had probably been there because the team just executed like crazy. And I came back to a healthier business with all of my members there. If I was one of those independent guys, I would have had to work through the pain. And if I had members at that time, I would have been trying to contribute to somebody else's life while I was processing the trauma I was going through. And that would have been unfair and really unfair to my membership unfair to me. And so when I see somebody who says, hey, you can do this all on your own, I want you to show me anyone in history who's changed the world as a single human being, it just doesn't happen.
Joe Troyer 22:43
I love listening to your podcast, you talked about hiring freelancers, right? Or freelance consultants versus hiring a company. Right. And you talked about why you'd much rather hire a company like any day of the week, and I think that's important for somebody to understand if they're an agency, right? What's in it for them? If they grow a team? And what are the what are the results that your customers are going to be able to get? Because they're not just counting on you, right? They have a system that works every single time, that should be a selling point. Right? That that you have a lot of clients and you always get this result, versus trying to stay in that one man band. So I thought that that was really an important takeaway from the podcast.
Alex Charfen 23:24
Yeah, I think Joe, you know, the, the, the way that I you know, I present that is if you have a team and you have an infrastructure, that's what you sell, you know, when you come to me, when people come to us all the time, they say, Hey, can I work with Alex directly? The answer is always no, I don't do one on one consulting of any kind, unless I have equity in a business and it's totally different. When I'm doing that like 99.999% of the time the answer's no. And, but there's a reason you don't want to work with me. I'm actually not that great of a one on one coach. I've got a ton of stuff going on. I homeschool my kids. I'm actually a high D personality type. I don't really have time for the interaction.
But I've hired amazing coaches who have the personality type is supportive and know how to convey our information. And so you know, I have this this I actually have a podcast called I think like danger one on one, why you don't want a one on one consultant why what you really want is to hire somebody with a team with backup with an infrastructure, because this is where you're going to really get the support you need. That's why I what you do Joe, you're showing agencies exactly that. Like as the entrepreneur, you know, you're the visionary. You're the idea person, you're the person who puts it together, you're the person who makes it happen. Don't ever fall into the trap of saying I'm the person who does it all.
Joe Troyer 24:36
Hundred percent love that man. So one of the other big things that I loved about the podcast, I think it's a perfect segue is talking with members about the the loops and spirals, if you will. Could you maybe talk to us a little bit about what that what that means and then give us an example or two. I think everybody has to relate to those.
Alex Charfen 25:00
For sure, Joe. So negative loops and spirals for the entrepreneurial personality type is where our addictive and our compulsive behaviors come from. here's, here's a typical loop is like, we need to be in momentum. And so let's just say you wake up one morning and you're not feeling the momentum, you're not feeling the push, you're not feeling the excitement, you're not feeling alive. And so when we feel that temporary loss of momentum, what we will often do is try and replace it with something. And so I'll just use an example of let's just say, we were like, I'm not feeling momentum, I'm gonna go listen to a podcast, or I'm gonna go buy a ticket for an event, or I'm gonna go do something. So that's what I call unintentional consumption. So let's say you're not feeling momentum, you get up, you just buy a ticket to an event, you know what actually happens? You start to feel some momentum. You spend some money, you went to a sales letter, You read about some outcomes, you got excited, we start to kind of feel like we're moving forward, then we might even attend the event.
And attending the event makes us feel even more momentum, more energy more of what's going on. But then the problem is if we didn't examine what we needed, if we're not sure of what's going to give us momentum if we haven't analyzed what we actually need. Next, we're counting on luck to that events going to actually give us momentum. And here's what happens. We attend, we feel all these positive chemical feelings of doing something. But then three months or six months later, we're like, hey, did that event do anything? For me? The answer probably is no. And then who do you blame? You don't blame the event organizer. We're entrepreneurs, we think everybody else that was doing great, I must have something wrong with me, I probably need to go to another event. And then you go to another event, you have all the positive chemical feelings you do, and then you end up in this loop. You know, Joe, one time I was teaching this in class, and I had my back to the class because I was drawing our model for loops and spirals on the board.
And I turned around and I remember it like it was yesterday. This woman, Christina Henley. She's a friend of mine in Florida. She owns a flight instruction school was bawling, like, bawling. And she's given me permission to share this story. And I stopped the class and said, Hey, Christina, you're having a huge reaction What's going on? And she said Alex, I never saw it this way. But you just described my life for the past several years, I've been to one event from one to another, I haven't implemented in between, I've just been on this like Warpath of how can I get to the next one, and where's the next event and what's going to be the biggest one and what's going to be the one that moves me forward, and I haven't really even thought about what I need. And she realized she had been in this aggressive loop that it turned into a spiral, it spirals, when it starts working against you, it spirals when it's no longer just giving up time, but it's actually moving you backwards. And so as entrepreneurs, the faster we recognize where we're in these loops in these spirals, and we move away from them, the faster our life starts to move forward.
Joe Troyer 27:39
Yeah. And that's awesome. I'm sure that everybody can relate. I don't think I know anybody that that couldn't relate to the spirals, the negative spirals and loops. I want to get your perspective on what's happening right now and in today's world and in the economy and everything that's happening right now as of recording this. It's a It's a beginning of August, it's August 11. And obviously, we're going through the pandemic, we're going through all kinds of crazy things in the nation in the world. I'm curious what your thoughts are in terms of how entrepreneurs and ETPs can navigate through everything that's really happening now. Right? What advice would you give somebody if I was really struggling, going through your program, and COVID and everything else has just taken me for a world? What would you tell me if, if I was one of those private coaching clients, if you were,
Alex Charfen 28:36
you know, Joe, what we have been telling all of our members all of our clients is that crisis is an accelerator and but crisis accelerates change. And when you you know, and right now we have this massive, very recognizable crisis called COVID-19 or Coronavirus, and it's kind of taken all of our attention. It's shifted kind of the attention of the world but if you if you look back through your life, let's get real. The world is Always in crisis crisis as part of the human condition crisis is actually normal. And when we look at crisis, it's a period of accelerated change. And when I look at this current crisis, this is the period of the most accelerated change I've ever seen in my life. Yesterday, I saw a graph where it was ecommerce growth over the past 10 years and then ecommerce growth since March. The growth since March has been equivalent to the past 10 years. We just grew 10 years from March to August in ecommerce sales. So the Coronavirus is accelerating everything. It's accelerating, how bad it'll put together, businesses are going to go out of business. It's accelerating, how people that don't have good products are going to exit the market. It's accelerating, how people who aren't watching their numbers and their finances and understanding their metrics are not going to make it and I bring those three things up. Because here's the other thing it's doing if you're willing to pay attention to your numbers, look at your metrics, know what's really going on. This accelerator can blow your business up. We We coach about 220 businesses around the world right now. I'd say 70% of them are growing, I'd say probably 30 or 40% have had their best month in the history of their business since March.
And so I think when anything like this happens as entrepreneurs, we need to just accept it and say, Okay, this is real. We are in a crisis, what is the most likely scenario of this crisis? And then that's what we focus on to get through it. So you know, I've been in crisis management of some kind my whole career. And so that statement, most likely scenario is what's going to get you through, what I look at is what has been happening, what statistically is most likely to happen, I focus on that, and then it allows me to kind of see the future. I think that's why our business is doing so well. While so many other businesses are really struggling because they're focused on the conspiracy and the politics and the fighting and the, you know, are you a masker or an anti asker or there's so many things in this current crisis that you can fight over. I'm like, you know, what, how much energy, how much time?
How much effort Can I focus entirely on helping entrepreneurs through this helping grow my business helping my team navigate this, because crisis is a period of accelerated change, which means it's also a period of massively accelerated opportunity. And I know this job like we went from bankruptcy to 21st, fastest growing company in the country. And we intend to do something similar this time.
Joe Troyer 31:26
Yeah, I love it. That's a great, great realization, and I've never heard it actually put quite like that from anybody else except for you. And so I think that that's a very, very powerful, I think, you know, right now, I think you got to lower the noise. There's so much of it, I think now more than ever. And I know for me that some huge takeaways were uninstalling all social media from my phone, uninstalling my email client and getting rid of that, that that gut like, you know, reaction that impulse that nerve check like, hey, did I get a message? Hey, do I have something on social media and just that alone has helped me lower the noise so much where I can think about the next month about the next quarter about through the end of the year. And so that's made a huge huge impact on on honest honestly, my quality of life, not just quality of business.
Alex Charfen 32:23
Yeah, you know, here's, here's something that that you just expressed Joe, but I want to put a statement to it. The world can be in crisis and you can be a momentum. Like, don't ever forget that anyone who's listening Don't forget, like the world can be in crisis. It almost always is, but you can be in momentum. You know, in 2000 789 things got weird for Katie and I, you know, the whole world was in this foreclosure crisis. People were losing their jobs, you know, companies were going bankrupt around us. I remember I had this this really amazing Porsche delivered one day it's still in my garage.
It's like a totally modified Completely decked out like street legal race car. And I remember it being like backed off of the car carrier when it was delivered to our office and it was delivered right to the front of the office. And as it was delivered, the company on the second floor of us was clearing out their building and going bankrupt. And so here I am having a luxury car dropped off. And I mean, it was such a weird feeling literally people were walking around my car with boxes, like they had just been terminated and just been let go. And it was it was this juxtaposition where I felt like for a second I felt guilty and I'm like, whoa, wait a second.
This that is the inappropriate is an inappropriate emotion to feel that is not the right way to feel right now at the same time that that Porsche was being delivered. Katie and I were donating 10s of thousands of dollars to charity. We were helping a ton of people. We were helping the foreclosure crisis recover. I mean, I earned that Porsche. I wrote a check for it. There's no no you know, payments on it or anything. So I had to reframe in that moment that hey, the world can be in crisis and we deserve We owe it to ourselves, we need to earn the momentum we have. And so don't ever forget that that if the world's in crisis, your job as an entrepreneur is to stay in momentum.
Joe Troyer 34:10
Dude, that's so so powerful. That's amazing dude that's that's the perfect way to to to end the podcast. I don't want to go any further than was such a complete thought in such a good like recap of everything that we just went through. So guys next steps, usually to ask Alex to recommend a book but we're going to do something different today. Alex, I want to link up in the in the chat and in the show notes.
Your book will link up the podcast. So first steps, go grab Alex's book, the entrepreneurial personality type and then guys go subscribe to his podcast, start consuming his stuff. And again, just because the world's in crisis doesn't mean you can't be in momentum. That's just so powerful. I want to leave you guys with that, Alex, man, thanks so much for having you. Or thanks so much for coming on the podcast. We'd love to have you back some point for around to so I'll definitely hold on to that. And so will everybody in the audience. really, really appreciate your time today.
Alex Charfen 35:06
Joe, it was my pleasure. And I'd love to have you on our new podcast Entrepreneurs in Momentum, So let's do that. And then just one last thing. So we have this promotion coming up. I don't know if it's okay to share it. But I'm doing I'm doing three days of training on the Entrepreneurial Personality type, The Billionaire Code, Client Centric Mission, Planning for Success and The Momentum Equation. I'm going to go deep on Spirals and Lenses and so it is a three days of training that's going to help you grow your business help you build your what you're doing in the first week of October.
If you go to Momentum Masterclass dot com, you can sign up and be one of the people who's there. So I'd love to have everybody there. Joe would love to see you there. And then thank you for today. I'm looking forward to recording again with you.
Joe Troyer 35:49
Yeah, we'll definitely link up all of that in the show notes and guys definitely take take up Alex On the October event. I'm sure I'll be there. And we'll see you guys on the next episode to Show Me the Nuggets. Thanks, guys.
