Alex Charfen is an entrepreneur, author and speaker who has used his experiences to coach small business owners on gaining momentum and growing their businesses. Charfen has experienced both tremendous failures — like going bankrupt during the 2008 recession — and incredible successes — like launching a business and growing it to a revenue of more than $10 million per year.
In this interview at Click Funnels’ Funnel Hacking Live conference, Entrepreneur Network partner Emily Richett talks to Charfen about the importance of taking care of yourself, knowing your market, and building a team.
Charfen recommends these three things to build momentum:
Reduce the pressure and noise in your life
Charfen teaches fast-growth entrepreneurs about how to take care of themselves first with hydration, nutrition, breathing and what he calls “daily momentum planning.”
“If you have the earning potential of a multimillion dollar athlete, you should treat yourself as one,” Charfen says.
Charfen also says, “If there is pressure and noise anywhere in your life, it’s creating pressure and noise everywhere in your life.”
Be polarizing and attract true believers
Charfen highlights the fact that “of the 29 million businesses [in the United States], 22 million are under $100,000 in revenue.”
He attributes this to entrepreneurs’ tendencies to “try and make their product available to everybody.”
He says, “if you walk into a room of 100 people, you should be able to identify the two or three that are your market. If you walk into a room of 100 people and you think to yourself, ‘80 people could buy my product,’ you’re doing it wrong.”
Scale with the power of a team
Charfen validates what all of us entrepreneurs already know: It’s hard to ask for help, especially when we are used to wearing every hat in our businesses.
“Successfully starting a business conditions us to do everything,” he says, before going on to emphasize the importance of strategically trusting others to take some of the pressure and workload off your shoulders.
Many small business owners resist the idea that they need a team, arguing that managing other people would increase their responsibility and add strain.
Charfen counters by saying, “When you don’t have a team, you are as exposed as you possibly could be … When there’s no team, if something happens to you, everything stops.”
He encourages entrepreneurs that even if they don’t think they’re ready for a team, they likely are ready. “Do it before you think you should,” he advises. “Get that first person on board to help you.”
