Relentless Standards and Execution Over Strategy with Armir Harris

0:02Who's ready to rock today, Fire Nation? JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Success Story Podcast. Today, we'll be breaking down relentless standards and execution over strategy. To drop these value bombs, I have brought Amir Harris into EO Fire Studios. Amir is a charter bus industry expert, rose from a political refugee background to found CharterUp, revolutionizing the booking process with transparency and accountability. He is a market leader known for innovation.

0:36And today, Fire Nation will talk about flawless execution, relentlessly high standards, a sense of urgency, and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to our Mir and our sponsors. The Hustle Daily Show, hosted by Juliet Bennett-Ryla, Rob Litturse, Ben Berkley, and Mark Dent, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. The Hustle Daily Show brings you a healthy dose of irreverent, offbeat, informative takes on business and tech news, like a recent episode on hackers versus casinos where the hosts talk about MGM Resorts and Caesars Entertainment and the devastating potential of cyber attacks.

1:14Listen to The Hustle Daily wherever you get your podcasts. Don't be the bottleneck to your organization's growth. Accomplish more with Belay. To get started, schedule a free delegation consultation with Belay in just 30 minutes. See how their flexible staffing solutions can grow your business and free you up to lead. Text FIRE to 55123 to schedule your delegation consultation today. Amir, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. What's up, Fire Nation? Thank you so much for having me on. One of the things that I strongly believe in that other people may disagree with is that I'm a control freak and I believe in being a control freak week, but not in the way that most people think of.

2:08Instead of being in control about controlling other people, I try to help people get back control of themselves and focus on things that they can control that drives great outcomes. Fire Nation, this is going to be a theme today as we continue going forward talking about relentless standards and execution over strategy. and one thing that I want to dive into, Amir, is that you believe in a flawless execution. What does this mean to you and how do you practice flawless execution in everyday life? Of course. So first of all, I believe that in order to have flawless execution, it has to start with your personal life.

2:51So I'll just give you a quick rundown of three things that I do and I believe in. And full disclosure, these are my views. These have worked for me personally in my personal life and professional life. So take it for what it is. The first thing that I do is I try to get seven hours of sleep a day. That is a non-negotiable for me. And I usually try to get these seven hours of sleep around the same time. The next thing that I personally do is I try not to eat too much before I go to bed. And I also don't drink alcohol before a workday. And to me, that's most days because call it the past 10 years, I typically work about six or seven days a week.

3:35I just don't want to enter the workday the next day with a foggy brain. The third thing that I do is I wake up early and I get at least 30 minutes of exercise every single morning. And after that, if that hasn't woken me up and has gotten the dopamine going, I take a very cold shower to wake me up very quickly. But personally, for me, I fundamentally believe that there is significant room for improvement at most companies without making expensive changes to headcount or significant investments. As you know, I started CharterUp with a few hundred dollars, quickly took it from zero to over$200 million.

4:21This year, we're run rating over$200 million. And we were able to get to$150 million run rate without raising any outside capital. We just picked ourselves up by our bootstrap and got it done. And I think one of the ways you were able to get it done is by having high standards, but not just your typical high standards, you have relentlessly high standards. So talk about implementing these standards for not just yourself, but for yourself and those around you. One of the things that I noticed is most corporations out there, good enough has become the standards, right? This is in most companies.

5:00and I think about my earlier days and there's two people I think about. I was trying to play professional tennis when I was younger. I was actually homeschooled the last two years of college trying to fully pursue tennis and I also think about my mother. My mother was a professor as well and both my mother and my coach taught me a very valuable lesson. When I would come back from school with a grade that I wasn't very happy with or let's say my mother wasn't very happy with she would ask me if I did my best and earlier on I would look at her in the eye and I would say yes I did my best even though deep down inside I knew it wasn't my best and then she would look at me and she would ask but did you really do your best so I learned that in my personal life and in business, I have to bring my best every day.

5:54And there's something fundamental about that, because when you understand and when you accept that you can't do better than your best, it's actually very relieving and there's a lot of pressure taken off. But then on the other side, we really don't know what our limits are on doing our best. And I apply this to all sides of my business on where on the people that we hire, on the operators on our platform. I think there's a few other things if I can. I think it's important to set really big and exciting ambitious goals. We actually just got out of a strategy session and I had the team create a strategy session and they came back with a plan to have 2x growth over the next year.

6:41So I took a look at it and I said a lot of great things in here, but one of the things we really have to do is we really have to focus and there's too many things in here. So rather than focusing on having 2x growth, let's focus on having 10x growth. And what this does is this naturally brings the best ideas and the best strategies to surface because there's no way to grow 10x without pursuing the best ideas. Well, if you're only trying to grow 2x, then there's an array of possibilities and many more ways to grow 2X. So I have a lot more examples, but these are just a few. Well, those were some great examples.

7:19And you have really figured out how to live life with a sense of urgency. You kind of mentioned earlier how a lot of people, especially in corporate America now, everything's good enough, kind of mosey from here to there, meeting to meeting, getting a little bit done every day, but nothing that important. you choose to live in a completely different way. That's with a sense of urgency. So tell us why you choose to operate in this manner. So if I really think about it, I go back to my childhood and my earlier life. I'm a political refugee from Albania, came with my mother and sister to the US in the 90s.

8:00And as I think back, if we didn't take urgent action during the late 90s and flee our country, I don't know if we would have been around, right? And when we came to the US, we came with$3 ,000 in our pockets. Very quickly, we exhausted that and that ran out. We were actually homeless for a bit. And around the age of 15, before I would go to school, so I would go to school around 8 a.m., I would wake up at 5 a.m. and help out cleaning the cabs, cleaning the limos, the vans. We were starting our own little family business. So I really realized that having a sense of urgency of taking action is key.

8:43But, and, you know, as I've gotten, you know, I've grown up and being homeless is no longer a concern. There's really a healthy sense of paranoia that I try to bring to the organization, right? And one of the things that I tell people when they join our company is you can bet that in a competitive market, competition is trying to take market share from you on a daily basis. That's as certain as the sun coming up every day. And the sense of urgency really drives action. And what it does, I think it creates forward momentum. And my view of having a sense of urgency is also because I think it's pretty binary, right?

9:26A great sense of urgency is contagious, But what's even more contagious, however, is sort of slow, passive inaction, complacency or incrementalism, which I see across organizations in America. And that's even more contagious. To me, that's like a cancer that metastasizes throughout the organization. Right. And I do this in different ways. One of the things that I do is we want to accelerate decision making. Right. We don't want to freeze or be indecisive. Another thing that I do is I ask people on my team, well, we have this project. How long is it going to take you? And when someone says it's going to take a week, I'll get it back to you in a week.

10:12I ask, well, what's holding you back from delivering it, let's say, in two days? They say, well, I can deliver it in two days. Okay, great. Is it going to have great quality? They say, yeah, it is. And I say, okay, well, what about tomorrow? Can you deliver it tomorrow? And they say, well, I can probably deliver it tomorrow. Right. So one of the things that I practice every single day in our business is really compressing delivery times and project times. Right. Because it's my view. It's really up to the leaders to set the pace. Fire Nation, when you hear the phrase, a sense of urgency, what comes up with you?

10:48Like, is this a life that you want to live? Is this a life that you want to take for granted? Is this a life that you want to max out? You know, just like our mirror said earlier, you know, why would you want to 2x when you can 10x, even if it means, especially when it does actually mean, hey, we're going to focus on a couple things to 10x those instead of 2xing a lot of things. We're going to have a sense of urgency on those couple things that are really the great ideas. And we're going to have a sense of urgency around those to 10x and to crush it. So we're talking about a lot of great things today.

11:24Execution, high standards, a sense of urgency. And we have a lot more to talk about when we get back from thanking our sponsors. The fourth quarter is here. It's time to hit your revenue targets, finish strong and win the quarter. But before you can win Q4, you have to close deals. And before you can close deals, you have to fill your pipeline and nurture prospects, which is oftentimes the hardest part. So how can you get a jumpstart on your Q4 sales goals? What you really need is an easy-to-use, all-in-one sales software like HubSpot Sales Hub. It's where sales teams can prospect smarter, grow revenue faster, and mine deeper customer insights.

12:01Sales Hub's all-new prospecting workspace gives reps a single, cohesive view of their work so they can focus on building relationships with customers. And with a new deal management tool, reps can easily categorize and prioritize deals so they can identify ways to accelerate revenue growth. It's smart software for smart sales teams who want to close the year strong. Win the fourth quarter with Sales Hub. Learn more at hubspot.com slash sales. One of the trickiest challenges you'll face in your business, especially as you begin to scale and grow, is how to make time to focus on the future and grow your operation while still delivering quality results to your existing clients and customers.

12:40That's because in order to accomplish this, you need support. The good news is for over a decade, Belay has been helping entrepreneurs scale themselves and create the time and focus they need to scale their businesses. Belay's flexible staffing solutions can match you with the help you need now and scale with you as you grow. Their virtual assistants, accounting professionals, and social media managers can free you up to focus on what matters most. Don't be the bottleneck to your organization's growth. Accomplish more with Belay. To get started, schedule a free delegation consultation with Belay in just 30 minutes.

13:13See how their flexible staffing solutions can grow your business and free you up to lead. Text FIRE to 55123. That's F-I-R-E to 55123 to schedule your delegation consultation today. Kate and I love home-cooked meals, and a company we've tried out while looking for quick and easy options is HelloFresh. HelloFresh. Let me guess. You don't feel like you have time to cook? Well, I've got good news for you. HelloFresh has 15-minute meals. That's less time than it takes to get delivery. Plus, HelloFresh can also save you money. They are cheaper than grocery store shopping and 25 % less expensive than takeout, not to mention the convenience factor.

13:54While I can't take any credit for being the chef, what Kate loved about HelloFresh is that everything comes to you pre-portioned. That means no messing around with buying ingredients you might only use once and no repeat visits to the grocery store for forgotten items. Oh, and did I mention that HelloFresh is America's number one meal kit? Go to HelloFresh.com slash 50EOF and use code 50EOF for 50 % off plus free shipping. That's 50 % off plus free shipping when you visit HelloFresh.com slash 50EOF. and use code 50EOF. Amir, we're back and you put a very high priority on protecting both the mission and the culture at CharterUp.

14:43Why do you do this and how? I think the mission is really important, right? People spend half of their life in the business or in the office or nowadays working remotely, right? And it cannot be about money because that's not going to motivate people. That's not going to give them the energy, the forward momentum that's needed. It's not going to rally people together. People have to have a mission and they have to have a purpose. As a company, our goal is to really use our market position where we are aggregating thousands of buses and thousands of bus companies on our platform and really use our market position for the greater good, which to us means helping bus companies really modernize the way that they run business, not just by adopting technology, but modernizing their fleet in an environmentally conscious and revamping business.

15:45and updating their fleet in an environmentally conscious way. You do believe that having an aligned team is critical for success. So let's talk right now about how you're building that team and getting them fully aligned. Having an aligned team is one of the most important things, right? One of the things that I've aligned my team on and I remind them constantly is to stay scrappy, right? And this touches on one of the other principles, which is having a sense of urgency. And I tell them it's always day one. Make sure you don't let your guard down. But one of the first things in order to align your people, in my opinion, is to form connection.

16:29Without connection, you can't really have a high-performing team, right? And diving a level deeper in order to have connection, you really have to create a safe environment. Creating an environment that's safe means having an environment of honesty, right? And I mean complete honesty. Healthy conflict, really healthy conflict, respectful but healthy ideological conflict is something that I push for and strive for every day. And you have to be vulnerable, right? You have to be vulnerable. We have to be willing to admit when you make a mistake, right? You know, I think as a leader, what the environment you create is really up to you.

17:14And what you allow is also what, in a way, you're creating, right? The environment that we strive for every day is an environment of creating positivity and an environment where there's so much positivity and positive energy where negativity does not live, right? And I think one of the things that I've learned and I've read and what we know from psychology is, you know, the anticipation of good outcomes creates more dopamine. And dopamine is really important for us in terms of creating productivity and really grappling and dealing with hard problems, if that makes sense. and aligning your people also means you know calling out the bs right so one of the things we do is whenever i see call it superficial head nodding and agreements in the organization especially these days as most most tech companies are working remotely and over zoom is if i see superficial head knocking head nod head nodding i try to nip that in the butt right away and i explain what the dangers are.

18:24But, you know, to give you an example, one of the things we do is, you know, every quarter, call it every two to three quarters, we have what's called a thematic goal, right? And this is something that our team really aligns around and they really rally around, right? For example, the thematic goal currently at our company, this moment in time, is to increase our referral business. So we rallied our entire team and aligned all of our people, product, engineering, operations, marketing, to increase our referral business. That is priority number one right now. And none of that would have been possible if we don't have the connection and the honesty and the opportunity to be vulnerable.

19:12Fire Nation, I hope there's a lot of things you're taking away here today. One thing that I love that Amir said that I had to do a little write down on was, it's always day one. Think about that. If you wake up every day and say, it's always day one, how would that change your mindsets? Now, Charter Ups guiding principles are focus, clarity, and execution, which people that have been listening to this interview would not be surprised that focus, clarity, and execution are your three guiding principles. But I want to know how you live these principles every day. Focus and clarity are really important.

19:52When I come off a call or I leave a meeting, I want to make sure that there is no ambiguity left behind in any way. And everyone is crystal clear on exactly what they have to do, exactly what they're going to be held responsible for, and exactly what the company is going to do, right? And part of having clarity and focus is being relentless about prioritizing, right? I think it's the responsibility of great leaders to prioritize. And prioritizing to me is as much about deciding what not to focus on as it is on what to focus on, right? The other thing is it's about eliminating distractions, Right.

20:39There's a ton of opportunities. And in my opinion, I think as a business, especially when you when you build a strong culture and a high performing culture, you think you can tackle, call it almost any problem. Right. Well, we could drown in opportunities if we take that approach. So for me, it's it's not just about relentlessly prioritizing, but it's also about just eliminating as many distractions as possible. and just focusing, having Hawkeye focus on what your goals are and just being laser focused on that. Fire Nation, do you have guiding principles? Like that's step number one. Then number two, are you living those every day?

21:23Just like Amir broke down. And Amir, you shared a lot of awesome content with us today. What would you say the one thing that you really wanna make sure our listeners get from this conversation today is? The one thing that I would say is just keep at it, right? I've been at this industry for a long time. I started at the age of 15, helping out my family business, went to college. Fast forward, I went back into the family business and I didn't really know how to tackle this industry and how to call it disrupt this industry. But I just kept at it and I was persistent, persistent. And, you know, if you're in business long enough, you may get lucky and good things can happen.

22:12So one of the things I would say is just listen to your gut, be persistent and be relentless. And if you want Fire Nation to connect with you, to learn more about what you have going on, what's your call to action for our listeners today? It's easy. One of the best ways to get in touch with me is on LinkedIn. Amir Harris, CEO of CharterUp, that is the best way to get in touch with me. Fire Nation, you are the average. Of the five people you spend the most time with, you've been hanging out with AH and JLD today, so keep up that heat. For links to everything we talked about today, visit eofire.com.

22:49Type Amir, A-R-M-I-R, in the search bar. The show notes page will pop right up. Amir, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you, brother, and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thank you, Fire Nation. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Amir for sponsoring today's episode. And Fire Nation, what can 3 ,000 of the world's most successful entrepreneurs teach you? How about how to achieve financial freedom and fulfillment? My first traditionally published book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success is a revolutionary 17-step roadmap that will lead you to the lifestyle you've been dreaming about.

23:32This book took me 10 years of accumulating the genius of the world's top entrepreneurs, and you can get it all in one place when you visit UncommonSuccessBook.com. I'll catch you there or on the flip side. The Hustle Daily Show, hosted by Juliet Bennett-Ryla, Rob Litturse, Ben Berkley, and Mark Dent is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the ideal destination for business professionals. The Hustle Daily Show brings you a healthy dose of irreverent, offbeat, informative takes on business and tech news, like a recent episode on Hackers vs. Casinos, where the hosts talk about MGM Resorts and Caesars Entertainment and the devastating potential of cyber attacks.

24:09Listen to The Hustle Daily wherever you get your podcasts. Don't be the bottleneck to your organization's growth. Accomplish more with Belay. To get started, schedule a free delegation consultation with Belay in just 30 minutes. See how their flexible staffing solutions can grow your business and free you up to lead. Text FIRE to 55123 to schedule your delegation consultation today.