The Game with Alex Hormozi - Breaking the Glass Ceiling in the Industry - Fireside Chat Pt.1 | Ep 399

Episode Date: June 21, 2022

Glass ceilings, boring work, and more! Today, join Alex (@AlexHormozi) and his wife Leila (@LeilaHormozi) as they guest speak at Fireside Chat Las Vegas to answer some Q&As on business, and give really awesome insights & advice. This is part 1 of the chat.Welcome to The Game w/Alex Hormozi, hosted by entrepreneur, founder, investor, author, public speaker, and content creator Alex Hormozi. On this podcast you’ll hear how to get more customers, make more profit per customer, how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons Alex has learned on his path from $100M to $1B in net worth.Timestamps - (1:38) - Starting over: Focus areas and things to do differently.(5:55) - Common struggles: Solutions to break through and go further.(15:23) - Evolving company culture, hiring perspective, and advice.(34:30) - Best time to hire a "duplicate" and skills to hone.Follow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

What's up, Moza Nation? What you're about to listen to is a VIP fireside chat from Grow with Video Live. There was a third day that was a secret unlocked day for people who chose to pay a lot of extra money to be a part of that extra day of VIP stuff. And the final talk of that day was a fireside chat of Q&A between almost about 50 people and Laila and I. And so the curator read the questions that came from the audience and you will hear our responses. It was mostly business owners at different stages, you know, some making, you know, a few hundred thousand dollars a year all the way up to, you know, $10 million year plus. And so there's a big variety of topics and questions that covered from how to sell more stuff to how to scale a team to how to hire the best assistant.

And so I'm really excited to share some of the behind the scenes stuff with you. They were gracious enough to share this very exclusive footage and you'll be able to hear the audio now. And by the way, this is part one of a two-part series. So you'll be able to enjoy part two in the future. so tune in for that one too. Welcome to the game where we talk about how to get more customers, how to make more per customer, and how to keep them longer,

and the many failures and lessons we have learned along the way. I hope you enjoy and subscribe. Let's welcome to the stage, Alex and Leila Hermosey. So we did a pre-select a Q&A for you guys. So earlier this morning, we had everybody go and write down their questions that they had for you. I know that you'd said that you would only agree to a Q&A if the questions weren't shitty.

So I did my best. So we'll go through some of the best questions I picked out the best, in my opinion anyway. And then I have a couple of questions for you guys too. Sounds good. Yeah. So the first question is if you were starting over today with the landscape today, what are some things that you would do differently than you did when you first started? Like areas you would focus on.

I think honestly it doesn't, it's not necessarily in like the mechanism in terms of like what would I do differently? It's probably where would I go? And so when we started gym launch, it was Facebook was blowing up and the opportunity was on Facebook. And so nobody really was doing you know, lead generation for gyms at that point in time. And nobody was really advertising there. Nobody was really creating a presence there. And so I would go where I see the most opportunity. So I think for people in this room, it's what platform is exploding right now and which one has the biggest gap that I can fill with my skill set and with my persona. So I would actually be looking at it like that. And we still look at that with like the companies we take in Acquisition.com.

We're constantly looking at like what platform is creating, has a gap that they can fill right now, essentially, like based on whoever they're trying to attract where their persona is and where the most arbitrage is. And so right now, I wouldn't say that's necessarily Facebook for as many people as it was in 2015. I would say that it's probably going to be more TikTok and I'm sure there's more that I don't know about that people in this room do because I'm just not on the cutting edge of that. But that's what I would be thinking with. It's not necessarily like, what would I do differently? Because I think, I mean, the only thing besides thinking platform-wise, what I would do differently is just, I think in terms of more, like, if you're looking like Zoom out level, strategic, it's just probably trust myself more.

Because I think a lot of people when they're starting off, they look to people like myself or Alex or Patrick Bet David or Gary. And they like listen and you almost listen blindly. And I think that I did that a lot. and I was really, really coachable, which I prided myself on. But because of that, I actually made decisions that weren't necessarily the best for me or the business because they're out of context, which is actually my big sphere when giving advice, which is I can give advice only to the context in which I understand the business or the person. And so that's usually very little if somebody comes up to me at an event or somebody

asks me a question on Instagram. And so I think that you always have to take everything that anyone says, no matter how much of the expert they are with a grain of salt, because oftentimes you are going to be, the one who knows the most about your business and you, many of the times, know more than you think you do. And so that's what I would say. I would be looking for

the highest leverage opportunity to monetize the skill set that I had. And so I think it depends on the person. So it's like if we were to start over, it would be a very different path. Like if we had all of our experiences, knowledge, et cetera, we would probably do a different path

than somebody who doesn't necessarily have the skills that they can wrap and monetize. And so like the, the primary way to acquire skills is to get experiences. And so most people are just trying to pick the right boat to get in, which is important the later you go. But in the beginning, like, you do need to start rowing just so you can get some time under the bar. And I think that a lot of people, especially earlier on, obsess over picking perfectly when you don't have the context from which to make the judgment. And so like the easiest example to visualize this is like, imagine, you know,

Cindy Lou Who wants to start losing weight. She goes to one guy and he says, you need to cut out carbs. Another guy says you need to have a high carb diet. Another guy says you need to skip breakfast. Another guy says you need to do calorie cutting, whatever. And so the problem is she doesn't know who to listen to. And she will spend most of her life in paralysis trying to like pick which one of these things when I think the better approach is I'm going to try to do one of them and see how it works.

And then I will do another one of them and see how that works. because by the time you have the perspective from which to make the correct judgment, you no longer need the thing you're getting. And so I think a lot of people, they have like the when then fallacy of thinking like once I have like X, Y, Z, then this will happen when it's reversed, which is like you have to accumulate the failures to learn the experience to improve your judgment so that you can then increase the leverage of the opportunity that you're pursuing. Yeah.

So if I was going back in time, that's ultimately the thing. is like what's the most expensive thing that I can sell? Which, and then I would try and do that. So this is one of my favorite things to talk to you guys about, which is glass ceilings that you hit at certain revenue markers. So I've talked to so many people at this event, and it's very apparent when people are at glass ceilings. And so experience has been that there is kind of a glass ceiling

that you need to break through to get over a million, one around 3 million depending on the business and then 10 million so starting with 1 million what do you typically find because I know you guys have worked with so many different businesses what are the areas that people are most often struggling with and then what are the solutions to those problems to break them past that mile market I'll even break one down zero to 100k just because I think it's worth bringing up so zero to 100k you have to sell something to someone the glass ceiling that someone hits is that they don't have a consistent way of doing that. So they sell stuff here and there. They have inconsistent acquisition, but they have,

they just need to learn to sell something to someone on ideally a particular channel. The problem that happens a lot of times when people waffle around in the 100, 200, 500-ish range is they can't pick. And so a lot of these people have lots of things that they're pursuing. I was just talking to somebody in the hallway. And it was clear that they had three different distinct brands and businesses that they were trying to pursue at the same time. And it's virtually impossible to do that. It's hard to win a war on one front, let alone three. And especially if you don't have the skills, because if you're at the 100K, 500K,000 million, even, like the skill set, you may feel compared to your peers, but you need to stop comparing yourself to those people because that's not going to be helpful for you. And so,

like, you're still like a baby in business. And so stack the chips in your favor and just trying to attack one thing. And so zero to six is selling something to someone is what you need to do. Selling something to someone consistently on one channel gets you to a million. Going from one to three million is usually then scaling that channel. So first is zero to one is you got to sell something to someone. One to 100K a month to 100K month is is getting consistent and reliable. And then, you know, one to three is usually just scaling the acquisition channel that you're on. At that point, typically, especially if it's a service-based business, churn will start to kick in, right? The amount of people coming in and going out starts to reach equilibrium so they get stuck there. And I know that

Layla will probably talk about the internal things that are happening at each of these stages. So get two different colors on it. But at the, you know, $250,000, $300,000 a month, which is typically when we take companies on, we need to massively increase the lifetime gross profit per customer. And those are softer skills. So it's like, how can we take the customers that are worth $2,000 and make them worth $10,000? How can make them worth $25,000 on average? And so people typically will make the mistakes. They get to $3 million. And then what got them there is scaling their acquisition, but their cost of acquisition starts going up and their margins begin to get compressed. And so cash flow starts dropping. And they don't know what to do because they have an even inflow and outflow.

And they keep thinking, the thing that got me here is I need to keep scaling more in acquisition, but it's a leaky bucket and everything's drawing out. And then they're like, why am I doing this? I'm never going to grow past this point, which is a good observation. And so it actually, at that point, you have to shift to the back of the house, which is all of the operational infrastructure, the customer success, the customer journey, activation points. How can we decrease time to value? How can we make sure that we're segmenting our customers appropriately so that we can make a product suite that is appropriate to people's willingness to pay. And then cutting out extraneous products. Because a lot of times at that point, you start bolting on these little hodgepodge

things on. You've got 16 things people can buy. The sales team gets confused. The prospects is even more confused. Your billing department's a mess. And so we just try and massively simplify that because simple scales, fancy fails. And so we try and get that really, really clean, really, really simple, have a beautiful customer journey that we can do. And usually we can grow from three to 10 million without even increasing acquisition simply by improving the actual business itself. And then at that point, once you take your LTV from 2K to 10K, for example, now at that point, we've earned the right to then go spend three times the money to acquire customers on new channels that we're going to be inefficient within the beginning and then learn how to scale and do profitably.

Awesome. So you would suggest not being a Web3 enthusiast, Forex trader, social media manager? Well, if you ask my 100 Hormozzi accounts, they use my name, they would disagree with you. But yes, I agree. Lela? Yeah, I think actually going from zero to, so I'll break it down from like zero to one million or even just getting started. I think actually having more people is more of a liability at that point. And a lot of people actually hire too soon. And so like I could get on my pedestal and say you've got to find a great Lela and operator and all this stuff.

But I think actually at that point, you have to, I think when you're nearing one million, you can get to one million with vendors and with part-time people. I think that when you get to close to one million, that's when you really have to start finding like, a super solid number two is what I want to call it. And I just think of it like your first follower, which is like that person who really believes in you, who's a jack of all trades, you can just do whatever the fuck you need them to do. And then typically that person plus a team of mediocre people

can get you to three million, like legitimately. Like three million is like what we talk to every week, 20 and 30 businesses. It's who we work with. You can get there with one really big superstar yourself and then like mediocre people. And they don't see mediocre because often you really love and cherish them, but you just don't know that they are yet.

Perspective for which to make the judgment. Yeah, you don't have the perspective yet. You don't know what A plus 10 looks like yet. Right. And so then, you know, around 3 million is when, like, when we take in a business and we're trying to get it from 3 to 10, the first thing that we do is identify the biggest areas of leverage in terms of leadership.

Oftentimes, like the founder or the primary number two, which is usually an operator, they're trying to fill gaps of leadership. So they're head of customer success, they're head of sales, their head of marketing. And typically, I try to outsource the things that they are worse at, or they have the least amount of time for. So a lot of times it's going to end up being coaching,

customer success, and sales. And then marketing usually keep really close to the founder all the way up until, honestly, like 20 or 30 million, they're still pretty involved. So to get from 3 to 10, it's a lot of bringing in that second level of leadership, like bringing in people who have a decent amount of experience. Because you're only at 3 million,

you're not going to be able to get people who are from freaking Google or Apple or anything like that, right? Because you're only at 3 million unless it's like a certain kind of opportunity that's very appealing and you've got investors and backed and all those kinds of things. Obviously, tracking talents is still an issue. But to get from three to ten, it's really building out that second layer of leadership. And then I think going from 10 to 30 is building out, again, another layer of leadership. So you've got typically from three to 10, you have maybe two executives, maybe three if you're heavy, and then like medium level leadership. And then to get from 10 to 30, it's really building out a full suite of executives, which is usually around five to six. And then a full suite of maybe 10 director level, mandor level people. And then all the layers below that. I think it's actually a lot more incremental improvement to go from 10 to 30 than it is from any other piece because a lot of the times it's just doing more of what's

already working without breaking it. And that's a lot easier said than done because it's actually really freaking hard not to break it because you've added so many people. There's so much more that you have to do to communicate. It's like at that point as CEO or founder, your job becomes like chief communicating officer, right? You're essentially just figuring out, I have to deliver this piece of news, how do I deliver this 17 ways so everyone finds out in the way that needs to be delivered to them? And so that's how I see scaling businesses. I see what people are needed at each incremental spot because that's kind of what I do on a consistent basis and Alex is focused on the external. And one thing that I'll piggyback on that Lela, this point that Laila makes that I just

like to make and then claim credit for is systems break when they triple. And so the, I think the one in like, you know, the 100K million, 3, 10, 30, like it's tripling. that happened. And so it's a great thing that I don't know. And that's why I'm really excited about, you know, the stuff we do with that because just not come, because maybe when we have, you know, 30 or 50 that we've taken, you know, all the way to 30 or 50 million a year, I'll be able to have a better answer on it. But I don't know whether it's the operational infrastructure of the tripling of the amount of people. And by that, the layers of infrastructure, that is the glass ceiling because you get stuck when you maximize that infrastructure that you

built out. And then you kind of waffle as you build the next layer of leadership. And then all of a sudden the capacity blows up again. So I don't know if it's the strategic things that I was talking about earlier in terms of what the focus is or the people side. Answers probably both. Yeah. And I think that a lot of it's that typically when people gain a certain amount of success, say you're at three, I've seen a million, I've seen it at a million, 10 million,

whatever. And you're trying to scale, you let that success get to your head. And so you add complexity into your business without understanding that the complexity in your business is the volume. And so as you grow, adding more leads, more salespeople, people. More customer success. More clients creates enough complexity on its own, but most people get bored or feel some kind of urge to build something else. And so they add complexity on top of the already growing complexity. And that's what usually stops them. And then it takes the business.

Thus the Web 3, social media manager, crypto. Which everyone should be. I mean, there's just too much opportunity. Recommend all of it. Yeah. I think it's good to almost just like write that stuff down. So like your brain feels acknowledged like, okay, I listen to the dumb thought that tried to detract me. and now I'll let go do their thing I'm supposed to do. Yeah, I think that that's a really, really good insight. And I also think that when it comes to those levels, the systems break when they triple. It's almost like you're reaching some sort of a capacity, right?

And then it's just like you have to change things up. What would you say was like of those levels was the most difficult part for you guys to break past building your own businesses? And is it maybe now the level you're at now? or do you feel like it's just do the boring word? Someone asked me this question yesterday, actually, which was for me, it was not growing the business myself. It was getting, it was allowing, not getting,

allowing other people to grow the business because I like doing it. And so in order for us to sell gym launch, it was, you know, I was used to, if I wanted to grow the business, Layla does more of this, Layla oversees more, Layla hires more people, Layla leads more people, Layla teaches leadership. Layla trains the team. Layla embeds the culture. And then in order to sell the business and make it sellable and really empower our COO and CEO, it was Layla trains one person on how to do all of those things and then doesn't do anything. And it's so it's, I've trained myself

to be so good at doing such a large volume of work and making such an impact. And I had to train myself to step back and not do any of it. And that loss of control and that loss of feeling like I was honestly contributing. And useful, yeah. Yeah, and useful. And doing the thing that I was really good at. That was the hardest part for me

because I like doing those things. And having to give them to somebody else was a feeling that it was just weird, you know, to the point where you realize that you're not even the leader above leaders. You are now the board, right? And the board is in the background

and nobody even knows who they are anymore. That was the hardest part for me. So I think it was at the very end. Yeah, I would mirror that because now that I'm thinking about it, because she brought it up. You know, we were stuck at 30 to 40 million for like three years. And I couldn't figure it out.

And I think I made a video on YouTube that was like my second big video that ended up hitting. But it was like, I had conversation with a billionaire. And he was like, dude, because I was like, what do I need to do? He was like, you have a faulty basis of assumptions. I was like, oh, uh, explain more. And he's like, you're asking what you need to do and you don't need to do anything. He's like, you need more drivers. Like there's only so much of you that can get spread.

you can't pass, you know, 30, 40-ish million a year because you are the one whose soul is, is like pushing this whole thing is like, you need more stallions. You need people who are entrepreneurial, who can. And that's really when you start to get into kind of the more visionary role, I think, because you have to grow your vision to be bigger so that true A talent, their dream for themselves can still fit within your vision because it's big enough for their dream to exist. And so I think that was a really hard mindset shift for me because to the same degree that Layla said, like as entrepreneurs, a lot of us start because we want freedom, right? But then as soon as we quit our job and then start, we have absolute control. And you

cannot have both freedom and control. And so we love the control, but we want the freedom. And so I think entrepreneurship as a journey from like a spiritual standpoint is a consistent relinquishing of control at each level. And, you know, you give up the fulfillment, and then you give up the selling, and then you give up the marketing, and then you give up the men. And you give up the relinquishing. And then you give up the managing, and then you give up the leadership. You're not leading anymore. And then at some point, you give up even doing the vision because there's somebody else who's just as visionary or even more than you. And so at each of these things, you're giving up control, but what you get back is freedom. I think it's really giving up a sense of

self-importance. Yeah, it's really hard. Talk about culture for a little bit throughout that process, because obviously when, you know, everyone says your first 10 hires, first dozen hires, first 15 hires is critical to culture. But then as you continue to grow, you start to feel like you're kind of like it's not up to you anymore, right? And like goal to hires maintain the culture. And then eventually you, like you said, you just get to the point where you're not even in the leadership side of things anymore. So when that happens, you know, like what is, how does culture evolve throughout that process? I actually have kind of, I guess I'm kind of stubborn about this, which is I think that if your company is not in the thousands,

I don't know why the CEO would not have the final interview with every person. And that's something I've learned in my own way and with my own observations and studying some of the best entrepreneurs out there and the best companies and not even studying the founders, studying the CEOs, the people that are hiring, the people that are leading the culture, because sometimes you mix up founder and CEO. I think that in order to maintain the culture you want, the one lever you have is who you bring in the company.

And so I think the nature of most companies in here is, I don't think many people have thousands of employees. I would say there's no reason why anyone wouldn't be hiring and be the one that's final interviewing every single person. Because I think that that setting of expectations into what we accept and what we don't accept, I think that's everything. And I've seen it myself when I've done it and when I haven't done it.

And at one point in gym launch, I got to a point where I was like, man, this is taking all my time. Like all my time has spent greeting new employees, doing final interviews, you know, setting expectations, you know, basically welcoming them, to the team because that's what I heard I was supposed to do, and things were going well. And the moment that I delegated that, it was like shit hit the fan. And it's not because it wasn't because the people weren't good, because they weren't good enough, to be honest,

to be hiring on my behalf. But when things are growing so fast and changing so quickly, there's no more potent source than yourself. And so I actually do believe that one of the most important jobs of a founder is to be that person who's the gatekeeper. It's like who's on the bus who's off the bus. And I do think that that is the number one lever you have in terms of controlling culture. And that's something that we've agreed on with this business, Acquisition.com, is like we're both going to interview and approve anybody that comes on at any point in time, no matter, you know, I mean, the model that we built out, I don't think we'll have over 150 employees, but regardless, I mean, you're going to have churn, you're going to go through

people and such. And we're both committed to making sure that we interview for those people and set the expectations and greet them and take the time to because I just don't think, I think having those personal relationships is so much. much more advantageous than people realized. And I think, yes, your managers are going to learn, and yes, they're going to be able to do a lot for you. And as you hire experienced people, they're going to be able to do more and more for you. But you will not get the same loyalty from your team that you would if you did that. And loyalty comes from caring about someone, extending care for someone as a human. And so there's no better way to show care for someone as a human

than to greet them than to take your time, right? Because there's nothing more valuable than the CEO's time. So to give them your time, like, I just don't think there's any more that you could do to express that that person is that important for the company. That's a really, like, you don't hear people say what you just said, really ever. So I, but in a good way. I think that that's like really profound advice. So what about firing? What is that like, is the CEO the last line of defense in your guys' opinion on that side of the equation? Or do you lead that to their supervisor department head or whatever. Yeah, I mean, that's tough.

I think that if I have a close relationship with somebody in the company, then I take it upon myself. I'm like, even if you have a manager, but like if maybe I recruited you, I found you, that kind of thing. You came in through my network. I would fire the person just because I would feel really shitty if I didn't. And I might have the manager on the call, right, to kind of, you know, just be sitting there, which is not, I don't know, awkward or not.

but I think in a lot of instances if they've come in through like, you know, you have HR that hires them, you do the final interview and you greet them and such, but they're with that manager the whole time. I would say it's the manager's responsibility. And mostly because when the managers don't have the responsibility of firing somebody,

they often do not put as much effort into deciding if they should stay or be fired. So if you look at companies where HR is able to fire people on behalf, which we have had it set up that way before and I've taken it away, it has led to more firings and it has led to lazy management because then people are like, oh, well, they're not working out.

I'm just going to fire them. Rather than like, no, we need to put them on performance review. We need to make sure that you're doing these things. Have you been training them? Have you been having one-on-ones? And so I feel like it's a cop-out almost. Mozy Nation, real quick, if you are a business owner that has a big old business and wants to get to a much bigger business, going to $50 million plus.

We would love to talk to you. And if you like that, we'd like to hear more about it. Go to acquisition.com. You can apply anywhere on the page and talk to one of our team and see if we can help you get there. I'll just add my my two quick, quick bits. One is as you're scaling, the values that you describe for the company become very, very important. And I'm bringing these two points up because the two points that I'm going to make are the two things that I thought were complete horseshit as I scaled, you know, scaled up. So I thought mission statements, values was all just like management hoodoo.

But I was proven wrong. And so from a values perspective, who here has values? I mean, I know you have values, but like for your company. Okay. Who has more than three values on your like value thing? Oh. So most of you have three values or less that you stick with? Okay. Interesting. Well, I'll tell you I didn't. And so the piece of advice that's can give on values is that you want the three values to be the most non-negotiable things. They are not aspirational. These are the three most, you know, biggest circles that we can say if we had these, three things, if I describe the three values of a business, you should get an idea of the vibe and the culture of that business. And it should be, have a directional slant. So I'll give you an example of like mercy versus justice. You want people to be able to read the values and say, I think that this company would lean more towards justice or this company would lean more towards mercy. And so the idea is not to be inclusive. It's to be purposefully exclusive. We want to shun

people away. We want people to read the values and be like, that's not my vibe. And it's perfect. because that way you get the right people on the bus, the right people off, or the wrong people off the bus. And those values, discussions become the eternal pillars that you can always point to when you're letting someone go or you're giving someone an accolator or an award or saying, hey, you completely embodied this value in this way. And so when you scale the organization,

that becomes really important because as you're bringing people on, those values become the thing that are you when you are not there. And so as you're scaling decision making, you can't physically make all the decisions that have to be made in a business as it's, scales and so the values are there in your stead. That's number one. Number two is that this is a belief shift for me is that when I started, I was 100%. I would say like if there's the heart and the head in math or in business or it's like the hard, the mathy side, which would be like sales, marketing,

very numbers driven. I said that was pretty much the most important thing. And yeah, like culture and stuff's important. But this was more important. And I think as, you know, we've grown companies, you know, over time, it then became, well, culture and strategy are equally important. And I think that where I sit now, I see culture is strategy. And it is the most important strategy. Because if you have the right culture, you can have an inferior strategy and still beat anybody else. And so I think what it does is culture gives you the ultimate padding for mistakes. And I think that a lot of us need a lot of second chances in business.

And so why not load up on that. So that's why I think culture is very important. Awesome. That was really good. Who would have thought? Who would have thought? So I have two questions on key hires. I think probably 90% of people in this room

are either looking to hire one of these two people. So we're first, we'll talk about executive assistance or some sort of assistant. And then a director of sales or someone who can replace them in the acquisition. process, right? So talk about like maybe the different stages. Obviously, some people are at the stage where they're just looking to hire a virtual assistant. Other people are looking to hire like their right hand, right? Like the true expensive like everything they need, like everything you need

them to do they do type of person. So just kind of walk through the executive assistant process. Process isn't like where do you find them? Yeah, sorry, like how to hire a good person, when to know when you need to hire somebody. Yeah, I mean, I don't think that you can go wrong if you hire a good executive assistant. So I'll say that because I think that an executive assistant is supposed to be one of the ultimate generalists in a company. You know, if you are the executive assistant to the CEO or to a CEO-o, you have to be a jack of all trades.

And so, you know, when people like, I've had to justify multiple entrepreneurs, they're like, I just don't want to know what this person's going to do. And I'm like, well, they know what they're going to do. And so I think if you're able to, if you are looking for somebody, what you want to look for, especially like people in this room, if you don't know and you've never had an executive assistant before, is somebody who can tell you what they're going to come in and do. And they can say, here's how I'm going to onboard myself. Here's how I'm going to make this as easy as possible for you.

And here's all the things that I would do. So if I were interviewing that person, what I would be doing, if I were to interview for an executive assistant nowadays, is I would say, here's all the stuff on my plate. What are you going to do? because essentially what you're hiring for is you're not hiring for somebody to complete activities. You're hiring for somebody to solve problems for you. And so I would be asking them, like, here's all the shit going on. Here's where I hate everything.

Here's where I'm overwhelmed. Like, what are you going to do? And it's like that for any role is you want to be asking them, you know, real life scenarios, which the only real life scenarios you have are the problems in front of your face right then, right? And so it's, how are you going to solve these? And I would listen to them. And I think that's the best way that you can judge somebody in an interview is hear how they would, because here's the thing.

It's like today, actually, actually before this, we got here. I was interviewing for a VP of ops for one of our companies. And it's a brick and mortar chain that's scaling. And I asked her, I said, you know, the problem, right? Like, we're, because I knew what the problem in the business was. So here's the way that you can spin it. I said, we're at, you know, 20 locations. We've got 15 in the pipeline.

What do you think our biggest constraints are right now? And then what she said was literally exactly what the constraints were. And that was how I knew that she was the right person. So I might say to an executive assistant, I might say, here's where the business is out right now, here's what I'm doing every day, what do you think my constraints are? And if that person has done what they've said they've done

and they are experienced, they've done it before, they're going to be able to name exactly what you're feeling right then. And I know that for me, like I got really lucky with my executive assistant because I've been with her for five years and she was the first person I hired. And Alex can tell you his take

because he's a few. Oh, for nine. You're on like your fifth. Nine. Nine. Nine. Nine. And, you know,

I got on the phone with her and I said, I'm just so overwhelmed and I just don't even even know where to start. She said, well, that's my problem. Like, I can figure that out. I will onboard myself. I said, what do I need to? And she goes, nothing. I'm resourceful. I will ask the team. I will find your logins. I will figure these things out. And that's exactly what she did. And then, like, within the first week, there was actually a sign that blew up and she ended up, like, taking meetings for me. And was it overwhelming for her? A hundred percent, I'm sure. But, like, she had my bat. And so I think if you're looking for that person, you just have to present them with transparency, like, this is what I'm doing, this is what I'm facing,

asking them how they would handle it, and then presenting them with where you're at in your business and asking them, what do you believe my constraints are right now? Because that's how you can really tell if somebody's done it before. I'll give you quick hitters. Oh, that was, yeah, awesome. A couple quick hitters. One is the definition of help is giving someone attention back. And so the point of this role is that they have to help you. And so you should feel relieved by this person. If you do not feel relieved by the person, they're not doing their job. So you should have attention back, number one. Number two, this person is one of, if not the most valuable person in the business because they give you the number one asset you have back, which is time.

And so if you think about how much your time is worth, if someone can give you 25%, 50%, 75% of your time back, how valuable is that? Right. So I think you should think about it through that lens. Number three is that this is from personal experience failing eight times and now having a ninth. And this one, Melanie, you're awesome. I love you. You're great. This one. We're in. We finally got it. We got it. You have to like your executive assistant. And I don't think I had a genuine like I didn't enjoy spending time. Not nothing wrong with them.

I just don't think I had like personal rapport with them. And I didn't realize how important that was because if I don't want to talk to somebody, I won't talk to them. And so then they're like, we haven't talked to Alex in five days. And we're like, it's probably not good for somebody who's supposed to be taking all this stuff up his plate. number four, if I haven't said four already, is the difference between administrative assistant and an executive assistant. A lot of people will use the term executive assistant because they want to get paid more. The difference is an administrative assistant, you know, handles some email correspondence scheduling a lot of that and little doodads. You know, maybe some personal stuff

here and there, right? An executive assistant is somebody who is supposed to really function like an executive, as then they can make executive decisions on your behalf. And so think, think, more chief of staff, less person who doesn't speak English that well, who I'm paying really not a lot of money. Not to say there's something wrong with an administrative assistant, it's just understand what you're hiring for. And so the administrative assistant is probably not going to give you a tremendous amount of time back. And if you're like a creator, you're more founder, for me, I don't have tremendous amounts of tasks that I have to do every day. The things that I do take a long time and are really valuable on high leverage, but I don't have a lot of things

that I check off. Layla, on the other hand, has a lot of activities that she's doing on a regular basis, far more than I am. And so the type of executive assistant should match the type of activities that you're doing. And so having somebody, especially who has industry experience as well, gives you a huge leg up. So like Melanie already knew the space really well. And so she knew the players. She knew the vibe. She knows how events go. And so there was a lot of catching up I didn't have to do. And so the idea is to try and find somebody who comes with batteries included. And so and has solutions already built into them because what we're doing is we're hiring a person to solve a problem. And I think a lot of people, and I think one thing that Layla said, I just want to reinforce because it was really important is that when you are interviewing people, it doesn't matter what's an executive assistant or otherwise, asking them to solve the problems that they're going to solve for the job. Because if you don't have problems for them to solve, then you should probably figure that up before you hire somebody and clearly define what the problem is. So clearly define it. And then ask them to solve it. And it's the easiest and most effective way of gauging, what is this person's level of thinking? What variables are they going to think through?

And what questions are they going to ask me? I might give them an incomplete data set. And then if they just start rambling off, then I'm like, well, that would be a terrible thing. Why don't you ask me more questions about it? And so you can pull more from that. So those are my quick hitters on executive assistants. Yeah. And just to have some tactical examples of the difference, like, an executive assistant,

like I'll give two examples of projects that one, each of them have. It's like one of them is leading the hiring of an executive role. And she's doing the first interviewing of everybody. And so I trust her enough to select, like, who is the right for this executive role, like a very high-level role in the company. It's paid a lot of money. And then one of our other executive assistants, because there's two, is leading like a very large real estate purchase that we're doing right now with a partnership. And she's led the whole thing and I just signed the documents. And so, like, those are things that it's like executive assistant. And so I think, you know,

just know what you're hiring for, like Alex said. And I think it's just, there's a very big difference. So when you get to the point where in your business where you are looking to, duplicate yourself when it comes to the selling side of things, right? So you're looking for someone who could maybe be an eventual sales manager, build a team, or a director of sales, walk me through how you find that type of a person. Well, I make a post on Instagram and say, hey, if you have lots of sales management experience, let me know. Build a personal brand. Sorry, continue. I mean, before that, I mean, we would post on the normal job forums. And again, we would look for people who have a lot of experience. And what I'll do is, you

you can try and get somebody to apply or you can actively recruit. And so there are two different ways of doing it. I would say that the higher up we go, the more we tend to try and actively recruit people because the best people have jobs. And that's a lesson that we have learned. And so you're like, well, how do I go get somebody? It's the same way you get a customer. You outbound.

You send emails. You say, hey, we'd love to talk to you. I've got this position. This is what we're looking at comp. And then you start to get feedback also from the marketplace. Is my comp too high? Is my comp too low? Is this interesting, et cetera.

And then from what to look for? look for and Lalo probably have way more, because she does much more of this than I do. But in terms of what I look for in a sales manager, number one is that they've already won an Olympic gold. So I don't want somebody who knows how to win Olympic gold or says they know how to win Olympic gold. I want somebody who's already won multiple times and they just need to win it on my team. And so they've already built the thing multiple times, ideally in a similar industry with a similar sales cycle. Now, that's another mistake that I made earlier on. If somebody was like really good at software sales with a, you know, a six-month sale cycle for, you know, enterprise.

SaaS, they might be really good salespeople, but that's a very different sale than, let's say, you know, a high transactional, you know, weight loss sale, right? And so if you have a sales team that's just banging phones and closing, you know, one to 10K deals all day long, that's a transactional sale, right? And so you need somebody who has transactional experience. And then the closer you can get to it in terms of where they'd be to be, was it some sort of like, as close to the industries you possibly can and the sale type, those are like the experience pieces. And then in terms of the personality piece, sales managers are operators. And that's where I think a lot of people mess this up is that they try and find a really good salesperson to be a sales manager.

And most really good salespeople are horrendous sales managers because many salespeople, not all, but many salespeople are very self-motivated, self-ish at times and very like, you know, killer, hunter. And that's fine. And that's required for the role a lot of times. But the sales manager has to be truly a team player has to sacrifice their ego for the good of everybody else. They have to be there to be the therapist. They have to be there to coach the team up. They have to have enough proficiency to be able to coach and listen to call recordings and give feedback and whatnot, but it's much more a leader. And their responsibility is the culture of the team. And the single greatest predictor of sales success on the team is the culture. And so they are really the culture

manager more than anything else. Because if you walk into a winning sales team, you can feel it. Has anyone here been on a winning sports team? Like a really like your team crushed it the whole year? As you, same people with their hands up, have you been on a really shitty team where you didn't do well? Sometimes you're the same player, but on a winning

team, it just feels different. Everyone brings their all. Everyone doesn't want to let their the guy next to them down. Everybody is dedicated to the ultimate vision of achieving W for whatever the W is. And a good coach is much more akin to what a good sales manager is more than almost anything else.

And so they're really driving that performance. And that's what really separates and builds world-class sales teams. Yeah, really good. Do you have anything to add? I mean, I could, but yeah. Awesome. All right. So what skills at your guys' place in business are you currently most focused on honing?

I can give you more. Yeah, go ahead. Wisdom and discernment. Just making good. I mean, it's a lot of decision-making. Patience. Yeah, patience, self-control, impulse control. Those are the big ones because, you know,

because now, like, to go from 100 to a billion, it's not something that happens overnight. And so it's like, these are the assumptions that have to be true in order for this to happen. And then we have to add time, and we have to not change the variables. And it's very contrary to our character traits as entrepreneurs who want to break shit and move

and innovate and you do have to innovate, but usually a lot less than you think you do. Because once you do have product market fit, there's not a lot of innovation that happens at scale. And so one is the patience that Layla just alluded to and the other is really just the wisdom because the part of how our business works is that we have to really, we have to pick well

because we get a lot of companies that come inbound because the amount of growth that the portfolio of companies experience is really high in Acquisition.com. And so a lot of people want, you know, to come in. And for context, we accept 0.2,000, percent of the deals that come in. And it's hard because sometimes it's like we love the sector or we love the business model, but we also have to love the entrepreneur. And we can't just like them. Like we have to really like love working with this person. It's very difficult because all of the,

you know, like there's a lot of ways to make money. And for every one of these deals, we know we can make money. But the question is like, is it the highest and best use of our time given the limited time that we have? Is this the horse that we want to take all the way? And that we believe can go to 100 and beyond. And we're not going to take on companies that we don't think can get there, specifically entrepreneurs that can get there. And so we have to see, like, deep into an entrepreneur and think, like, I get how we're going to get this person to, you know, 10 or 30. Like, we can see that really easily. But like, are they the person that can withstand that pressure? And do we think that they are coachable? And can they evolve enough in that period of time to sustain the growth that we know

that we can wrap them with? I think for me it's quite different, which is, you know, like in terms of team size and such, like, you know, Jim launch at the peak was like 120. This team right now is like 10. So like in terms of managing the team and running the team, that part does not feel hard to me. What is the challenge is there's probably two things, which is one, the people that we're bringing on,

in order to have people that can work with the businesses that we work with inacquisition.com, they have to have already been there done that. Because would you, imagine this, right? You're inacquisition.com. And I'm like, hey, here's our sales, expert and he's going to train your sales manager. Then you're like, cool, what's his experience?

And it's like, well, I taught him how I've done it. Like, he's my little intern. It's like, do you really want him? No, it's like, fuck off. So I think it's finding people who are already experts. And then it's been interesting to learn how to, I'm used to a team where it's like motivation rah, raw, like pump up.

It's a lot more that involved and a lot more shaping and growing people because they're more green. This team is basically just executives or executive level. And so it's learning how to, when everybody is better at what they do than you, how do you manage and how do you grow those people. And so that has been a unique challenge for me to learn. And also humbling to learn that, and I've said this in different videos as of recent and as of the last year, which is the basics still buy, which is like what a lot of people don't expect, right? You've got people that are 30 years in, season, paid a shit ton of money. And

like you still got to start off with an employee onboarding. And like, I skipped it for like two people. I'm like, I'm paying the price, which is crazy, right? Because you're like, you would think, you can just never assume, never assume that people know anything. And so that's been, that's interesting for me to understand how to build a team that way. And I would say second to that, like more on a personal level is splitting my time because I've always just been internal. Like I didn't start making content until about nine months ago, 10 months ago maybe now. And so all of my focus was 110% just building the team, building the culture, running the business, you know, like driving the strategic initiatives. And now it's doing that plus learning to make

content and learning to build a brand and learning to do all these things. And I think like a few months into it, I was just like, oh my God, we need a team for this. I can't, I don't know how to do this. And so it's being able to figure out where my attention is more important. Is it internal right now or is it, you know, this long, long, long term play of building this brand so that, you know, we can have a bigger impact than we've had the past. And so that for me has been a personal struggle because I feel like I like I like to be a 10 out of 10 on everything I do. And I feel like I'm not a 10 out of 10 on either right now. And so it's a constant, it's a dichotomy I have to manage. And so I have to constantly remind myself that so I don't tell myself, you know,

you fuck it's up. That's what it feels like to work with amazing people though. So that's, yeah, makes you like pull yourself up by your bootstraps. And that concludes part one of the Grow With Video Live VIP section fireside chat. And stay tuned for part two, the second half, the conclusion of the saga of the VIP fireside chat with growth video.