I’m joined today by Alex Charfen for another episode where we’ll talk more about the business side of the clinic. Leveraging his experience growing and scaling multiple types of businesses, Alex now devotes his time to coaching entrepreneurs and sharing the lessons he’s learned along the way. Among the gems in this episode, he talks about how practitioners have to emphasize their process and results, instead of just their own name and reputation, in order to scale. This can allow clinic owners to build teams and have a business that isn’t 100 percent reliant on them as the main provider. Alex also goes on to share some of the unique experiences he’s personally had with the Neubie, including accelerating by many months his recovery after bicep tendon reconstruction! For more information on Alex, check out www.momentumpodcast.com
[Garrett salpeter] 0:10
I’m Garrett salpeter. And I believe that the most powerful and transformative way to help people recover from pain and injury, heal from trauma and reach their highest levels of fitness and performance is to focus on the nervous system. In this podcast, we’ll share knowledge from the frontiers of neuroscience and inspirational stories of how applying that knowledge has empowered people from all walks of life to heal, adapt and grow. All right, this is a very special episode of the undercurrent podcast, I’m joined by my very dear friend and business coach, Alex Charfen. Alex, thanks for being here. Garrett. I’ve
[Alex Charfen] 0:47
Been really excited about this. Thanks for having me. Heck, yeah. So
[Garrett salpeter] 0:50
Just for a little bit of background, Alex and I have been friends for about five years now. And he actually started advising us pretty shortly thereafter. So. So I’ve learned a lot from him, personally and professionally. And I’m really excited to have him on to share some of his wisdom. And just to help everyone understand, you know, why, why, Listen, why they should even care about what you have to say Alex can you can just share a little bit about your background in business and some of how you got to be where you’re at today?
[Alex Charfen] 1:21
Sure. So, you know, I’ve always been an entrepreneur. And since I was young, the businesses that businesses that I’ve run had been either consulting or coaching or working with other businesses in some way. And so I started in my 20s, as a consultant where I worked with another organisation and worked with Fortune 500 companies, global 100 companies, and also start up consumer and computer electronics, businesses, always coaching always, you know, back then it was called consulting.
[Alex Charfen] 1:51
And so I was an outside consultant, a manufacturer’s rep, I also did packaging, consulting, distribution consulting. Basically, when a when a company had a failing product, or product line, or division or territory, we were called to come in and make things better and move them in the right direction. And you know, that business we what we did was we applied process, structure and routine to do turnarounds. And we would come in and just and figure out what was missing. And then and turn, turn those things around. And after I was in that business, when I met my wife, I left the consulting business, it’s a much longer story than that.
[Alex Charfen] 2:26
And there’s a lot of good and bad there. I’m going to share the highlights today so that we can get into talking about the newbie, but we were in real estate for a period of time. This is kind of foreshadowing we were in real estate in South Florida, we did extraordinarily well, we had three different businesses, literally 10s of millions of dollars in annual credit, productivity and revenue. And in 2007, that all went into the vacuum called the foreclosure crisis. And we actually went bankrupt and ended up starting another business out of bankruptcy where we created a information product that we trained real estate agents on how to help people through the foreclosure scenarios. And so we ended up going bankrupt in 2007.
[Alex Charfen] 3:07
We were in Florida, where it got hit very early. By 2011, we were the 21st fastest growing company in the country. And now again, there’s a lot of good and bad in that story. And I I always hesitate to be the coach or consultant that just shares the highlights, like there was some serious challenges. It’s not like we went through bankruptcy and just it all turned around. But we were able to get through bankruptcy launched the product become liquid millionaires within a year and we were the 21st fastest growing company in our first year of eligibility.
[Alex Charfen] 3:35
And I often get asked, how you did that. And it was applying the same process structure and routine that I did when I was consulting at the higher company levels. And the real estate products we had was called the certified distressed property expert designation. We trained almost 50,000 Real estate agents. And we would probably be doing it today. But it was a product for the foreclosure crisis. So when the foreclosure crisis went away, we shifted and we were already kind of an online business.
[Alex Charfen] 4:01
We were already doing a lot of information products, and we were doing some coaching. And we shifted going away from real estate exclusively and started coaching, really what we call expert based businesses. You know, when you look at the membership we have today we coach over 200 companies worldwide, I think somewhere around 240 250 today, and most of them I’d say the majority of them are run by some type of an experts. So we have experts who run ecommerce businesses or product businesses, kind of others that run practices or service businesses. So Garrett, you’re kind of a hybrid of all of those.
[Alex Charfen] 4:34
And then we also have, we have coaches and we have agencies and so service based businesses that are online that are selling products run by an expert and today we help those businesses grow and scale through hard core process structure and routine. You know, I think every entrepreneur gets into business have freedom. And if they’re anything like me which most are we’re very entrepreneurs are very similar in our personality types, we tend to fight process structure and routine.
[Alex Charfen] 5:05
But then, you know, I’ve been in business long enough to know, in the times where I fight routine where I fight process, you know what that voice in my head says, I don’t want the same meeting on my calendar every week, those are the times where my businesses do not grow. And I feel a complete and total lack of freedom. And what I’ve found is by, by having hard-core process structure and routine that I do not disturb, I allow it to continue, even if I’m not going to be there, I don’t cancel meetings, I let my team continue to run our structure, working within a structure, that’s when I usually get the freedom that I want and the results of that one.
[Garrett salpeter] 5:38
That’s awesome, it’s a little bit of that almost, almost ironic, or, you know, seemingly opposite notion of like discipline equals freedom, where, when you have when you have structure, when you have discipline that actually, you know, reduces your decision fatigue, it sets up the framework to where you have freedom within those, those boundaries that you’ve created, kind of the ultimate freedom. So for people who aren’t able, who are just listening to the audio and don’t see it, and there’s a behind Alex, there’s a few of those Inc. 500 awards, so, so it’s legit, I’ve been over there, and I’ve seen them in person.
[Alex Charfen] 6:13
Anybody wants to look me up, they go to the 500 site. You know, we weren’t, we weren’t just on the Inc. 500. Listen, I think it’s important to share, there is you know, I’ve worked with a lot of fast growth companies and in fast growth companies, there’s a constant, that there’s collateral damage, there’s a lot of challenges in basketball companies, you hire the wrong people, you bring them on the wrong way, we did a lot of that we did you know, we had those challenges, but at the same time that we won the Inc. 500 awards, we were also voted the best place to work in Austin by size, we made that list each of those years. So even though there was challenges in our business, and believe me it it was not perfect, we still were able to get voted by our team as the best place to work in and one of the best places to work in Austin. So when you have process structure and routine process, relieves entrepreneurial, entrepreneurial anxiety, which is real, as entrepreneurs, we just feel anxiety, it also creates freedom, but process structure and routine also protects your team. And that is really important to us.
[Garrett salpeter] 7:13
And, you know, in my experience in interacting with you these last several years, you know, I was first interested, because, you know, we would talk you, you were you know, a client of ours, and we’ll talk about some of that experience later on. But, you know, we would talk and I’d ask you about you since you had been a manufacturer’s rep and you and help scale distribution for many types of electronics products. So I’d like to ask you a lot about the product side of the business just here and there.
[Garrett salpeter] 7:37
And you had tremendous wisdom to share. And then from the CDP when you trained all these real estate experts, you know, I was just talking with you about how we were intending to roll out a certification to train doctors and therapists. And you had such great insights there. And I was like, Oh my gosh, you know, this is this is, you know, Alex is just a wonderful resource. And he shares so, so graciously. And then, you know, as great as that was, I think that the same idea of process structure and routine and the systems that we’ve implemented in our business, both in the brick and mortar business, our showroom in Austin.
[Garrett salpeter] 8:10
And then our newbie business here where we’re training other doctors and therapists and other providers around the around the world how to use this, that that restructuring process has been so beneficial for us. So I’m excited to talk more about that. Let me let me just see if there’s any, you know, whether it’s bad or just kind of pose the question to you, for the various practitioners who are listening to this, whether they have a newbie, they’re considering getting one, what’s the top piece of advice, or the biggest opportunity that you see in these more service based businesses, whether it’s rehab therapy, more fitness oriented? What what’s kind of the biggest opportunity you see generally across that category of businesses.
[Alex Charfen] 8:55
So, you know, if we were talking about a specific business, I would ask exactly what level they were at, and we could address what that business needed. But if we’re just going to, if we’re saying all practitioners, or all, like therapists or practitioners, service based businesses in that space, you know, we coach a lot of the gate, we have a lot of Cairo’s and functional medicine doctors and therapists and physical therapists. And here’s what we see across the board in those types of businesses is that there’s a lack of a core process.
[Alex Charfen] 9:25
And here’s what I mean by that. I know it’s a process all the time. It’s like, you know, when you’re writing, you don’t want to have the same word over and over again, whenever I look at a transcript on one of my podcasts, I’m like, Oh, my gosh, all I said was process. But that’s just how it is. You know, when we work with a practitioner, what we want them to do is move away from selling themselves and start selling a process. Like let me give you an example. A really good example is one of the practitioners we work with Jason Bradley. So Jason is a functional medicine doctor and everybody who knew Jason in the past wants Jason they want Jason to talk to him. They want Jason on the phone. You know, they want, they want to interact with him and interact with him exclusively. And I think it’s like that for a lot of doctors, therapists and practitioners, because you haven’t given your clientele or your members or your patients a different option.
[Alex Charfen] 10:13
And the way that you give them a different option is you brand the outcome you create. So Jason has an outcome called the epic diet plan. And he has this entire process that is really well spelled out that has a step by step application. And he sells that and he sells a result. So if you go through the epic diet process, which I have, you will reduce inflammation, you will get rid of food sensitivities, you will optimise you’ll feel better than you ever having, you’ll sleep better than you ever have, and have more energy. And you know, I actually went through that process, I bought it from Jason interacted with him because we’re friends, but I actually did all of my interaction within the process with his team, and I got an incredible result.
[Alex Charfen] 10:52
And so if you give your members, your patients, your clients, an alternative where they get the outcome they want, you can actually scale the business. And, you know, we have this this, this joke phrase in our membership. Whenever somebody in our membership says, oh, you know, at an event, this will often happen. I know you’ve seen this happen here. Well, someone will say, Well, Alex, I’m the only person who can. Well, as soon as that leaves somebody’s mouth, everybody in the room starts snickering and laughing because I know what’s coming next. Like as soon as you say, I’m the only person who can I’m going to prove you wrong.
[Alex Charfen] 11:25
Because Can you imagine I hear things like this, like, I’m the only person who can do intakes, I’m the only person who can set up a therapy plan, I’m the only person who can figure out what the patient really needs. Can you imagine if Elon Musk was like, I’m the only person who can set up the factory floor, I’m the only person who can do the design for the Tesla, I’m the only person who can be there when the rocket launches, like come on, you know, the way that you scale, the way that you grow, the way that you actually create something greater than yourself, is to remove yourself from that unicorn position.
[Alex Charfen] 11:52
So in our memberships, we have this joke that as soon as somebody says that we say you are not a unicorn, and we’re serious about it’s like do not make yourself a unicorn in your mind. Because you will never be able to replace yourself. And that is the key to really grow and scaling a business. And when somebody like says it twice, will say you are not a freaking unicorn, and occasionally we’ll use a different word. So it’s become such a joke that we had stickers printed. So at our events, you often see like on computers, it says stuff that says I am not a unicorn, because our members taken on as like a badge of honour, like I’m not a unicorn, I’m never going to put myself in that position where I’m the only one who can do it.
[Garrett salpeter] 12:27
That’s awesome. That’s, that’s great advice. And I think that speaks to what, what you were talking about, about, you know, people wanting freedom, they start a business because they want freedom. But then I hear from a lot of a lot of doctors and therapists that they, they almost as much as they love patient care, and they got into it, because they wanted to serve people in their community at a very high level, they often get to the point of like, of burnout, where they almost begin to resent their patients, because they, they feel trapped by having to be there and have their hands on every person.
[Garrett salpeter] 13:04
And if they could have another therapist, you know, working within their business, if they if they didn’t have to see all the patients, if they could spend some time working on the business instead of in the business, that would give them an opportunity to scale where it’s not so dependent on them, they could take a vacation, they could take their kids to school, they could get a little more time to do the things that they want
[Alex Charfen] 13:23
To for us, it’s a little more dramatic, like when we when we see I have a progression that I think that that practitioners go through. So whether it’s a therapist, or doctor or Cairo, whoever it is that we’re talking to, yeah, so they go to school because they want to help people. And you know, in my experience, 100% of the practitioners I’ve ever been around want to help people I know that there’s this impression sometimes out there that some practitioners go into it just for the money I’ve never worked with or met one of those. However, here’s what happens. You go to school, because you want to help people and then you end up in this business, where school had nothing to do with what you’re now doing.
[Alex Charfen] 13:57
And 90% of what you do, you don’t really have training to run the business, do the marketing, grow the grow, you know this stuff and you end up you end up getting stuck somewhere in the business, it kind of plateaus, it stops growing, you’re doing the same thing every day, you know, maybe patients aren’t getting the result you want. But here’s what happens practitioners feel so much pressure that we kind of see it as a cascade first it starts with frustration towards the business then it then there’s some some like irritation, frustration with the team or with if you don’t have people around you, there’s irritation, frustration with the patients that are coming in. And then what happens it’s not almost developing negative feelings.
[Alex Charfen] 14:32
There’s a level of where you get to patient animosity where it’s like, I have to go see these people I have to help these people. And we see like most practitioners who don’t get help but want to make a bigger impact start feeling that lack of bigger impact with not being able to get the help they need and it does get focused on the irritation of the moment which is normally a patient walking in. And so when a practitioners reach that state of patient or team and animosity, the only thing we know of that will get them out of there short of leaving the profession is hard-core process structure and routine, branding the process, then applying it like crazy in the business and making sure there’s a team there to back them up so they don’t feel like they’re doing everything themselves.
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[Garrett salpeter] 15:49
That’s beautifully said. And I think that the this is an area where we’ve heard actually reminds me of a podcast from between five and 10 episodes ago, where it’s funny enough another Jason and other Jason, Jason was physical therapist talked about how having the newbie allowed him to do this very thing, because he was the guy where, you know, he was the experienced one, all of the patients would come in, and they’d request him.
[Garrett salpeter] 16:17
And then when he got the newbie, he was able to train his much more junior PTS or PTAs, to use that, and they were getting such good outcomes that patients would come in, and they would request that that junior person. And, of course, Jason’s not, not only, you know, he’s not upset that someone doesn’t want to see him. He’s, he’s overjoyed, because that frees up frees him up.
[Garrett salpeter] 16:36
And he actually had the time, the space in his life, to be able to create a whole new continuing education platform. So he’s now educating other PTS providing continuing education to them on various elements of, of clinical and business practice. And so I think that’s, that’s beautifully said. And I think there’s an opportunity here for especially for, you know, for the practitioners who are listening to this, who already have newbies, where we can talk about different ways to brand this process. And I think there’s ways to even improve that. So that’s fabulous advice.
[Alex Charfen] 17:08
Yeah, for sure. It’s really the, by the way, if that story you just shared, when we’ve helped a lot of practitioners get out of what we call the firing line, it’s like we need to get you out of being the only person who can do the thing. And when whenever a practitioner gets the request for somebody else, to us, that’s like the biggest one you can possibly get. It’s like they only wanted you before, and now they’re requesting someone other than you they’re requesting the person you hired, the person you trained, you have to look at that as like you have now succeeded as successfully replacing yourself. And you can scale that. That’s right.
[Garrett salpeter] 17:43
Yeah, Elon Musk is still out there, assembling the doors on the car, you know, some problems, they’re not making, they’re making one a year instead of, you know, 500,000, or whatever, you know. So another thing as we’ve been working together? Well, I definitely want it one, because you’ve had some interesting stories with the newbie, I want to get into that. Is there anything else in terms of just high level stuff before we move on? That that we should share with? Specifically, doctors, therapists, clinic owners, practitioners?
[Alex Charfen] 18:15
Yeah, I think, you know, just to go a little bit deeper into that I’m not a unicorn thing. You know, I think here’s what happens to practitioners and where they get stuck here, right. And you can actually see it in the numbers in businesses in the United States. When you look at the number of businesses that are 302, or sorry, 100 to 300,000. There, there’s like 1.7 million, when you look at 300 to a million, there’s 1.9 million. So when you look at all the businesses, the United States, from the smallest to the largest, there’s this declining curve. But there’s actually a little bump where there’s more 300 to a million businesses than there is 100 to 300,000 businesses. And the reason is, practitioners get stuck.
[Alex Charfen] 18:54
And they get stuck in a place where they’re doing it all themselves. They don’t know how to back out of it. So they’re not the only person doing it. And the advice that I have for practitioners is don’t try and do it all at once. Here’s what happens, the thought in your head or that we’ve helped people process and the mind-set we’ve helped people shift is that they think, oh, I need to replace someone, someone needs to come in and do everything I do. There’s no way that’s possible. I’m the only one who can do all this. I’m overwhelmed. And we have a podcast, I have a podcast called the momentum podcast. And if you go to my website, you can search for an episode called double your productivity in two weeks.
[Alex Charfen] 19:30
And it’s about doing a time study and figuring out what you’re doing that you need to do. And what you’re doing that you can offload and the way we help practitioners offload is one time study at a time you record everything you’re doing for a couple of weeks, then look at it and if it can be turned into a job description, you go find the person, maybe even part time who comes in and starts relieving pressure from you.
[Alex Charfen] 19:51
And you do that one step at a time. And we you know, one of the things like the myth in the practitioner, you know, Doctor industry, medical industry, whether it’s fear To go therapy, everything is that you cannot replace yourself. And we actually believe that is a myth. Because what we’ve shown over and over again is that step by step, when you use process, not only can you replace yourself, but here’s what’s really exciting is that often, you start getting higher retention, higher resell higher upsell numbers, because when you’re no longer trying to be the business owner, and the entrepreneur and the CEO and the marketer and everything else, and you’re not doing that, and practising, when there’s someone who’s just exclusively focused on the outcome for the person walking into your business, it radically changes how the business grows.
[Garrett salpeter] 20:38
That’s yeah, that’s, that’s so true. If you’re, if you’re trying to wear all of those hats, you just can’t, you can’t be as effective in any of them. And so I’ve, I’ve seen that as I was at various stages of this transition, where I was still doing sessions with people and working on elements and growing the business, I’d be in there. And, you know, I was just, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t think as quickly of the next thing that I might normally try and in a treatment progression, or I just wasn’t as effective, because I wasn’t doing it all the time, I was almost a little bit out of practice. And that was a challenging part.
[Garrett salpeter] 21:10
And, you know, maybe I’ll mention this in case some people relate to it. But for me, I identified so much as the guy who would help people get better that, that to step out of that and have, you know, hand that off to someone else. It was like, it was like, a shift in a deeply seated identity of myself. And so having to change that, you know, it’s all I think it’s only possible one, if we’re first aware of it, and two, if we have a different identity, that we see it as being more beneficial, or more important that we can to which we can aspire, that allows us to do that.
[Garrett salpeter] 21:43
And so that’s, I think that’s the only thing that can really motivate us to change if there’s some sort of pain around wanting to show that or some sort of very strong desire or aspiration, to move in another direction. And this, I can tell you that what Alex is sharing here is, is you know, this is the thought process, and that time study has been super beneficial for us. That’s how we’ve hired, you know, 10 new team members are something does go through that process and using that to identify, Okay, what am I doing that can be handed off to the next person? And, and having everyone on our team ask that same question. So that’s awesome.
[Alex Charfen] 22:16
You know, it’s interesting, Garrett, when we were going through those conversations, I remember you brought up what so many practitioners bring up when we’re having this talk, it’s like, always going to do this. And like, there’s this defensiveness, I remember, Alex, I’m always going to have clinic hours, I’m always going to be and I’m like, okay, Gary, you know, what just allow the possibility that that fades, allow the possibility that there’s a different outcome for you here. And, you know, for anybody who’s listening, if you, here’s what’s interesting, as you start to offload this, then you’re going to now feel this loss of identity and like, Whoa, I need to keep doing this, I need to keep my hands on people I need to still be doing and, you know, here’s, here’s the visual that I like to paint, you know, what’s more important, you actually treating a patient?
[Alex Charfen] 22:58
Are you standing in front of a team of 10 people that are going to treat 10 different patients in the next couple of hours and treat 300 patients this week that there’s no way you possibly could have done it, and given a whole community and outcome, rather than just the people that you can serve? And I, you know, I it was fun to watch you go through that entire progression, Gary, there was there was a lot and there’s a lot of insecurity in it. I think anybody who’s listening, if you feel insecure, or challenged or, or anxious around those things, those are very valid concerns. That’s why having a clear process that you train consistently, and that you know, is going to get people the outcome is the way to do this. And the way to hand it off.
[Garrett salpeter] 23:36
Yes, absolutely. And Alex has a lot of wonderful content on teaching that very thing. And so at the end here will end in the in the notes for the show, we’ll put links on how to how to access Alex’s podcast, see some of his content, you know, maybe become a peer of mine and join the coaching group, you know, whatever, whatever works for you. But let’s shift for a moment because you have some really interesting experiences also, with the newbie, and there’s a couple of different examples of how you’ve used it that I don’t think we’ve touched on in any episodes, at least up to this point. So can you share some of the the kind of biggest highlights that you’ve had with a newbie over the last few years?
[Alex Charfen] 24:15
Yeah, you know, and for me, they’re highlights not just of the newbie, but of the methods that you coach and train, you know, so, if I can step back a little and give a little bit of the story of how you and I met. I’ve always been, I’ve always been a kind of a bit of a biohacker, you know, certainly not to like the lengths of Dave Asprey or anybody like that, but Dave has become a close friend, because it’s such an obsession of mine. And when I look at
[Garrett salpeter] 24:42
And you’re not that far off in terms of the, the equipment you have and the education, I mean, let’s be honest, you know,
[Alex Charfen] 24:49
Yeah, we build pretty much a probably a quarter to a half million dollar Rehab Centre in our house. And I’m the only patient
[Garrett salpeter] 25:00
Your wife and kids are allowed her
[Alex Charfen] 25:01
Wife and kids do. Yeah. So my wife every once awhile, she’ll let it slip out. Like, I’m so glad you buy this stuff. It totally helps. But so you know, I, from my whole life when I was younger, I was physiologically inept. I was the kid that like, I still have vivid memories of this in third grade, being the kid who, who, during the presidential physical fitness test in California, I came in last place in every category, including when I was measured against the girls in my class. So I was like that, that kid who always felt like I like I, when it came to physiology, when it came to, to doing anything physical, I was not going to win, and probably at around 13 to 15 that turned into okay, how do I fix this? How do I change this? How do I make this better?
[Alex Charfen] 25:43
So my whole life I’ve been, you know, I’ve been seeing a chiropractor since I was 16. And my parents didn’t take me I drove myself there. And you know, I’ve always sought alternative therapies, alternative medicines, acupuncture, cupping, massage, like the list of modalities I’ve tried is is it’s exhaustive, and it would be difficult for me to even go through them on this, this podcast. And there was a day where I was actually getting both a chiropractic adjustment and a Rolfing session in the same building.
[Alex Charfen] 26:11
And I walked out of the welding section and the entire time that this woman Norma Bandy was working on me, I heard like yelling and plates clanking, and like grunting and I’m like, what is going on? There’s like, you know, there’s a massage therapist and some essential oil lady and another massage person and a raw offer and an acupuncturist, who’s yelling and screaming, like, what is this? And I went in, and I met Derek, and there was this guy doing squats with, like, all these wires hanging off of them. And I think I’m a little unique in that I was like, Oh, well, this is definitely for me, how are they? What are they doing here? Like, wires and cables. And, you know, I remember you explaining what the what you were doing with electricity.
[Alex Charfen] 26:52
And I was so intrigued, immediately intrigued. And so, you know, we I started coming in and getting sessions with you. And within just a few sessions, using the methods that you have put together, I was feeling levels of flexibility I’d never felt before, there was some issues that I had in my shoulders and my lower back that over the course of just a few sessions disappeared. And I know that sounds so grandiose and kind of like impossible. But literally, I had rotator cuff stuff, I had shoulder things that really went away through using the new foot method of identifying where the issue was and then really going after it.
[Alex Charfen] 27:27
And then you know, as an adult, I’ve become far more active than I’ve ever been. And I started teams of teams where the light went on and I you know, I work out a tonne I optimise and if you’re someone who does a lot of things you get injured. And so my first real intense experience with the newbie outside of just using it for rehab and optimization was when I tore my bicep muscle off of the forearm on my left arm. It’s one of those excruciating
[Garrett salpeter] 27:59
Pain when you were doing it was
[Alex Charfen] 28:01
Upside down, pull up. So I was hanging on a pull up bar upside down and I was going upside down pull ups, and like just rotated in the wrong way and strapped the stretch the bicep too long. And I heard it snap and it snapped and went up into my shoulder. And so I got off of the the pull up bar I was on, I knew that I was in a really bad place because I literally did not have a bicep in the right place. I had to push the muscle off out of the shoulder complex, it was horrible.
[Alex Charfen] 28:27
And within a couple days, I was on an operating table having it reattached in Arizona, I actually flew out to work with somebody who does that surgery for pitchers for professional baseball pitchers. Because if they experienced something like this, like they, you they go to the experts. So I went to the expert. And when I came back, I think it was my third day after surgery, I immediately started using the newbie, and all we did was I slept with one, I actually kept it at my house. And I connected a pad on my shoulder and I kept it connected to pad on my fingertips. And I would just sleep with a low dose of current going through my arm every day. And in addition to that, I wrapped it with a game reading machine.
[Alex Charfen] 29:09
So not only was it getting a low dose of current most of the day, it was also frozen and getting alternative pressure and then release from the game ready. And what happened was, I remember the doctor that I had the surgery with told me that due to my age, I think I was about 40 I was over 40 At the time, he said that the chances of me getting back to 100% range of motion where zero said you know we get to 90% we’re going to be really excited about that. And that the recovery but based on age and based on how the tear was and how the tendon was that it would probably take somewhere like eight months to eight to 18 months. That was the range that he gave of where I would actually be able to use the bicep again and lift weights and do everything that I had done before. So I wore a brace for the first it was 30 days so 30 days in the brace but 30 days In the brace with the game ready and the newbie, and when I took the brace off, I went straight back to 100% range of motion. And I sent the doctor a video because he asked me to take a video when I took the brace off. And I sent it to him.
[Alex Charfen] 30:11
And that afternoon, he replied and said, Can you take another video I need a different angle, like he was so shot at two things, one, the range of motion and the other thing was the lack of atrophy in the bicep, I definitely had atrophy. Like there’s no way my arm was the same size. But in that type of a surgery where the tendon is attached, reattach the atrophy is normally like over 50% It’s it’s it’s a very, very devastating type of injury to the bicep mine atrophy. But nowhere near that much in fact, coming out of the brace it my arms kind of looked normal, if I just stood still. And he looked at me if you really looked, you can see that there was a difference.
[Alex Charfen] 30:51
And so the doctor said was the first time he’d ever had anybody who had come out of the brace to 100% range of motion at any age. And so that happened. And then I continued to use the newbie, and we were we were somewhat aggressive, like according to you know what everybody was telling me about how I had to pay to the arm, we immediately started treating the bicep running currents from the forearm to the bicep from the back of the shoulder to the bicep, and like every single day trading it.
[Alex Charfen] 31:18
And I think it was probably three months later, four months later, I was doing pull ups. And you know, the doctor actually suggested I should be really careful with him. So I remember the first day doing it, I’m like, Can I do this? Is this possible, and I was really trying to put all the weight on my right arm. But there was no issue there was like a little bit of tenderness and soreness. And since then I’ve you know, whenever I feel any type of an issue with the bicep, because having that type of reattachment surgery, occasionally you get some tightness occasionally get some, some fatigue, I’ll run and throw the newbie on it. And it don’t even feel like I’ve had a surgery.
[Garrett salpeter] 31:53
That’s awesome. That’s awesome. I know there’s I know, there’s a few more but we maybe we’ll save those for, for a part two, we’ll get you.
[Alex Charfen] 32:02
There’s one other just one thing I want to share is you know, I have two daughters. And when I was a kid, I went through growth spurts I had had what was called Osgoode slaughter. And I knew that that was probably going to happen to my kids.
[Alex Charfen] 32:12
And they’ve done that, you know, they like grow, and then they pause, and then they grow. And then they pause. And they’ve experienced really severe growing pains. And the newbie has been the most effective tool we use. You know, we’ve iced and we’ve done stuff like that.
[Alex Charfen] 32:26
But as soon as I had a newbie in my house, whenever they one of the kids would say my ankle hurts, my knee hurts, my arm hurts, we take them in, and literally one treatment for growing pains, and it’s gone. And they’re not complaining about the issue anymore. So having, you know, I don’t know that everyone’s going to be able to have a newbie in their house, but having access to a newbie for things like that, like the immediate reduction of pain, the immediate reduction of frustration and the feeling of having that stuff. It’s it’s I mean, it’s, it’s the I always tell people, people always ask me, you know, out of all this stuff you have, I have three PMF machines, I’ve got a, you know, infrared sauna, I have infrared lights, I have the red light therapy, there’s I mean, I can continue listening on and on and on. Whenever somebody says like, if you could only take one thing, what would it be? And I get that question. Often, it’s always the newbie, because there’s so many different applications, it’s a complete gem, just in a box.
[Garrett salpeter] 33:19
That’s awesome. I appreciate that very much. Thank you for sharing those. The bicep is so interesting, because you know, people hear these stories, and they think, oh my gosh, it’s a miracle or something. And really, those types of stories should be common because it’s your body is actually that’s the actual rate at which it can heal. We just impede our own healing process because of how we just neurologically subconsciously guard and protect and brace and inhibit around the injury.
[Garrett salpeter] 33:49
And by just, you know, resetting some of those protective patterns, you get out of the way, those impediments that would be blocking the healing process. And so that’s awesome. I really, I love that story. I so appreciate you sharing that on here. And then the parts with the kids, the same thing with us, like we see, you know, our older daughter, I think twice now as a you know, as a kind of a competitive dancer, she’s tweaked, you know, a knee and an ankle or, and you know, their hip. I don’t know, I forget what hell but you know, just one or two treatments and the kids they respond, you know, tend to respond even more quickly.
[Garrett salpeter] 34:25
So it’s so cool to see that but that’s a’s a really cool I don’t think we’ve talked about or haven’t even really discussed that much even internally like with our team. That’s a really cool use case. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah. If so, if anyone’s interested in in the type of, you know, coaching business related content that you have to share, actually, let me let me share my perspective. So if people if people asked me about this, I say well, you know, my education is in engineering and neuroscience and I never went to business school so I feel like being in your coaching programme has really been my my version. of getting an MBA. So, you know, I’m grateful to you for that. And if anyone else is interested in, you know, to kind of learn more about your content when you have to offer seeing your podcast, can you? Can you let everyone know, please, the best way to find you?
[Alex Charfen] 35:13
Absolutely great. So the podcast that we have is called momentum for the entrepreneurial personality type. Momentum is kind of my word. I feel like as entrepreneurs, we live from momentum. And so that
[Garrett salpeter] 35:25
Process when I thought of your word was positive.
[Alex Charfen] 35:33
Quote, I use exactly process protects your momentum. Because once you’re in momentum, what keeps you there is process and so on that podcast, most of the episodes are somewhere between 10 and 20 minutes, they’re usually single episode or single issue episodes where it’s like, let’s solve a problem, let’s understand how to get past something like double your time into or double your productivity in two weeks. And if you go to momentum podcast.com, you can listen to it on any one of the platforms, it’s out there.
[Alex Charfen] 35:59
It’s also on iTunes. And then, if you’d like to understand a little bit more about what we do, we have a download that you should get called the billionaire code. And the billionaire code is our framework. It’s the nine levels that it takes any business, any practice e commerce company, any of the types of companies that I talked about earlier, to go from zero to $100 million. And it will, if you download that framework, it will show you where you are now, what you should be focused on in order to get to the next step, and maybe some of the things you’ve missed that have you plateaued or not really in the business that you want.
[Alex Charfen] 36:32
And if you go to billionaire code.com, you answer a few questions for my team, you can download that matrix, there’s a video of me explaining it. And there’s also a book called The billionaire code decoded, that will help you walk through the analysis process of where are you in your business, exactly what you should be focused on, so that you make the most progress that you can to the next level.
[Garrett salpeter] 36:51
And it’s so interesting, it’s able to turn business into almost like the rehabilitation process, you know, you reach you reach one milestone, and then something predictable happens. And then you have to, you know, do something to solve a problem or, or identify and, and take advantage of a new opportunity. And then you go on to the next milestone. And it’s, it’s a really, really cool, very logical, very well thought out approach to business growth. So I love that. Thank you so much for being here. Alex, it’s been a pleasure to have you on again for another one as well.
[Alex Charfen] 37:27
I’d love to. I mean, I want to come back and just share newbie stories, because I think I have some of the funniest newbie stories in history. And like, you know, the day that I brought two crazy bodybuilders into new fit that were like, Oh, we got this and then couldn’t walk by the afternoon because they, they’d like challenged Garrett to give them a workout or there’s so many other stories, I want to come back and just share newbie stories.
[Alex Charfen] 37:47
And then and then some of the other successes that we’ve had with the machine because it really is the most effective piece of equipment coupled with the systems you teach, or the process you teach. It’s the best thing that I’ve ever used.
[Garrett salpeter] 38:01
Awesome. Thank you so much. Thanks for being here. And thank you everybody for tuning in and listening to this episode of the undercurrent podcast. Thank you so much for listening to the undercurrent podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review and be sure to subscribe to stay up to date as we release future episodes.
