The Game with Alex Hormozi - Problem Solving: It's Usually the Big Obvious Sh*tty Answer | Ep 155

Episode Date: October 5, 2019

"When you're looking at problems in business, start with the big, obvious hairy one, which is probably the one you don't want to look at.” Today, Alex (@AlexHormozi) discusses the importance of confronting the big, obvious problems in business rather than looking for advanced solutions to small issues. He emphasizes the need to focus on the fundamentals and execute them consistently to achieve success.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:(1:31) - Clear, simple communication is effective.(3:44) - Address the big, obvious problems in business.(7:13) - Goodwill is important to prevent attrition.(7:50) - Emotionally detach when appraising business.(10:00) - Finish strong to circle back to the beginning(12:34) - Consistency is key to making more money.Follow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

And coming back from a beautiful weekend in Vegas Pirates Cove. And I wanted to talk about problems. And I wanted to talk about it because it is something that we as entrepreneurs do all the time. And a lot of us don't do it very well. And I think that the number of the thing that I get pulled on the phone for and I get comment, you know, I get tagged in and I get DMed is because people have problems and they don't know the answers. Right. And so one of the biggest lessons that Layla and I have learned as we've grown our

business is kind of the unsexy truth about problems. And the truth is that it's it's usually the really shitty obvious answer. And so what I mean by that is that, for example, if you're trying to, you know, get leads in the door and you're like, man, like this campaign isn't working, it's usually not because of your Facebook bidding or because of the, you know, audience that you're doing or the demographics or like crazy Facebook algorithm, whatever. It's usually because the ad sucks. it's usually because the creative's not compelling it's usually because the offer's not very good and the messaging isn't clear

as in people just don't even know what to do next right like one of the biggest things like I get like the biggest advice that I can give for like copy and creative and marketing it's like just be ridiculously clear and assume you're talking to someone who's in the third grade or less like why is the big like why does every single

like the presidential candidate that speaks to the lowest dialect in terms of reading level always wins is because most people just don't give a lot of attention to when they're listening and doing things. And so the clearest, simplest way of communicating typically works. And so it's like, man, my legion is working. I should probably go through this advanced Facebook course. Probably not, right?

Probably just need to make the ad better because it probably just sucks, right? And it's like, man, my page isn't converting. Like, what are the hacks to get the pages to work better? It's like, you know, I've got to do load times. And sure, the stuff works. It's important to have fast load times. It's important to have all that stuff. But usually it's because the headline doesn't make any sense and it's not connected to the ad that they clicked on, right?

Or it looks and feels different than the advertiser. Or it's connecting to something that's not congruent. And so like the simple shit, right? It's the big, obvious shitty truth. Okay. And then let's say, for example, that this person magically makes it past the ad, magically opposite, and then they're scheduling. Oh, my schedule rate sucks. People aren't scheduling on my thank you page.

Well, it's probably not because the low times or because you have some fancy schedule it's probably because the availability that you have is shitty right you get horrible times and it's unlikely that the person can make those times because you're only doing it to the 30 minutes that you can do every other day and that's not convenient right if for example you suck at sales or your sales numbers are terrible right you're like man i've got i've got to learn some super secret selling stuff not really it's probably because you're not going through the basics of like labeling the pain asking them why they even came in today like figuring out what's been missing in their and why the solutions they've done in the past didn't work, right?

And then making him an offer that's relatively compelling, giving him a guarantee. Things like that, that would actually get someone who's normal to say, you know what, I'm going to forget the fact that I just met you, and I'm going to sign up, right? And then you're like, man, like, my retention's horrible. Like, why are people leaving? It must be because the Facebook algorithm is attracting weird humans into my gym. It's like, warrior classes suck. You know what I mean?

Or rather, they probably don't suck. They're probably just mediocre. Right. And maybe everything's mediocre. And what I mean by that, and that might be hard to hear, but the reality is that the people who can hear that and actually do something about are the ones you're going to be able to win. And so like, when Layla and I look at the problems that we have in our business, because believe me, the problems don't stop. They just get bigger and hair because there's just more stuff on the line. When we look at the problems that we have, we're usually like, what's

the big obvious thing? Like, what's the really obvious shit? Because entrepreneurs, a lot of times, we don't want to face the fact, right? We don't want to say, what if my trainer's not that good, right what if my sessions you're just average right because like you're seeing people work out so you're like it's a success but on average it just might be average and if you're average it's really hard to win right you're going to compete in the middle that's where everyone else is and everyone else is broke so you don't want to be like right and so then you're like man no one's ascending right no one's taking our upsells no one's no one's no one's buying semi-private no one's private no one's private no one's providing nutrition and accountability which we branded as hybrid but it's actually just

nutrition and accountability. No one's buying it. Well, it's probably because the first thing they got wasn't that good. And they were like, well, I don't want to risk something else because this one I'm not really already that satisfied with either. Right. And so one of the hardest things in the world is just looking and being like, huh, why, what would somebody much dumber than me think if they looked at this, right?

And if I were to ask somebody off the street, hey, no, it's coming to my gym. Why do you think? They might be like, maybe your gym's not that good. right but like we're like no it can't be that it can't be that it must be something really advanced and technical and have all these hairs on it's like no it might just be that and it's usually because simple problems have complex answers right and that's and that's one of the like i think Trevor cashie says this line it's like short questions have long answers like what is the meaning of life very long answer right what is a calorie very long you know like it's like there's there's long

answers sometimes to short questions. And so it's like, why are people leaving? Right? There's a lot of facets to it. It's usually because once you face the reality of the music and you just accept responsibility for the fact that maybe just maybe the food at your restaurant isn't that good, then you have to go through the really

hard work of examining each piece. One of the first things that we do, especially if we had something that worked and then stopped working is we examine the people. So we look at the people, we pull them out and we're like, huh, what was it like before? When did this person start? and did it start sucking afterwards?

If it's a yes, then it's usually that person. So even if I'm like, hey, are you working the leads? Hey, are you following the script the way you're supposed to when you're selling people? Hey, are you greeting people with a smile? They're like, yes, of course I am, because I'm supposed to say that. But like, are they really? Right? Are they really?

Well, if you're looking at the data, you're like, okay, everything's going fine. And then on Wednesday, last week, so-and-so starts. Then all of a sudden, our show rates tank. Hmm. Right? we try to be reasonable and and listen to people but a lot of times they're just not executing the process that already worked right like for example if you were like you were doing great with lead gen for a while right and then the big C word comes along complacency because you're like you know what

I got this all unlock I'm going to move on to another part of my business to start focusing there cool but then you forget to keep doing the things that got your lead gen so good maybe you're not making 10 ads a week anymore you're making five you're making three you're making it every other week, right? And all of a sudden, the actions that got you there stop happening. And so the results that got you there stop happening. The issue is that with business, a lot of times is the delayed feedback loop, right? So you might stop doing some of your attention stuff that you were doing, that you were doing well, you were talking to members, you were reaching out to them. And then all of a sudden, your gym grows and you stop doing those small touch points. And then

all of a sudden, your attrition goes up. And you're like, what happened? Right. I mean, people came in. Our turn was fine. And then a couple months later started going up. And then the thing is that you had goodwill, you were depositing into the relationship bank, and then that goodwill started getting extracted out, and then as soon as there's no goodwill left, the attrition start spiking, right? And so when you're looking at problems in the business, start with the big, obvious hairy one, which is probably the one you don't want to look at. Then look at see if there's people who have gone into that process and changed it since, like, since stats either went up or down and like oh shoot that's such a good one um something about the final piece of this um

maybe it'll come back to me um but the hardest part is is letting go of your emotion when you're looking and appraising your business and i think one of the biggest insights that lela has given me is she asking me the question all the time she's like if you were your business coach what would you tell you. Mosy 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, $100 million plus, we would love to talk to you. And if you like that, we would 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. And I'm like, I've said this before and I'll ask you to say it again for yourself. If you were your own coach, a lot of times you actually have pretty good insight into what, like, the nice thing is that you're like subconscious mind knows everything that's going on your business but when you take the perspective right and you say like well if i were getting coached i'd be like here's my issues right and if i as the coach we're hearing these things this is what i would tell back a lot of times it's different than what you're actually doing and honestly i can't tell you like sometimes i feel like i coach other people's business better than i

coach my own and sometimes it break my own rules and then i go ahead and i'm like wow that was dumb i even coach people not to do this and i make the same freaking mistake and so when you're looking at the overarching process first look at the big hairy problem and except that it probably is the big obvious one that you don't want to confront and it's nothing advanced and you don't need to read another advanced copywriting workshop or you don't know need to go to a seminar on funnels or you don't need to you know become a super hardcore closer like you might just not be doing the basics right or the person that you put in isn't doing the basics anymore and that's one of the hardest parts because like the thing that gets you to the next level is that you solve the problem And then when you move on to the next thing, that thing keeps going. And that's why sometimes owning a business can feel like spinning plates, right? It's like, oh my gosh, as soon as I let this one down, the next, or like I get this one spinning, the next one breaks or whatever it is, right? And the hardest part, if you think about business as a pipeline, which I'd encourage you to do,

you have to make it all the way through to the end without anything dipping before you can come back to the beginning. So what I mean by that is that you have to have lead generation on lock. You have to have nurture on lock, meaning the schedule and they show. You have to have sales on lock, so you're closing at a high percentage and a high average ticket, right? You have to have your retention unlock. People are staying. Turn is going down or staying the same, right? And the ascension, when you make internal plays and when you have upsells for nutrition,

for accountability, for semi-private training, whatever it is, that people at a fixed percentage continue to take them, right? And then when you get all the way to the end and nothing else has fallen, that is how you scale. Because then at that point, you go all the way back to the beginning and you say, all right, I worked my way all the way through this pipeline, right, and nothing broke with 10 leads a day, with 15 leads a day, whatever it is, right? I wonder if we can do the same thing at 50 leads a day. And then everything fucking breaks again.

And I promise you that this cycle literally never ends. And so if you're wondering, like, if the business problems that you have will end, they never will, so let me just, like, get you out of that mindset. But you have to take them one at a time and you have to usually confront the big obvious thing, which is that the fundamentals usually just aren't being done. It's really it. Like, when I look at other people's businesses, it's usually the fundamentals. And I'm not even talking, like, I'm not even just talking gyms. I'm talking like, I can tell them with other other business owners who are 10, 20, 30, whatever, a million. And they'll ask me advice on whatever.

And I'm like, are you doing this? And they're like, I'm not sure. I'm like, you should probably check because this probably not happening. And then they call me back. They're like, dude, oh, my God, it was a mess. I went in there. They weren't doing any of the stuff that I taught them. And it's like, it's usually that.

It's usually the big obvious thing. And it sucks. It like really sucks. But this is what we sign up for. You know what I mean? It's that we're trying to get this machine to work and work consistently. Right. And so first start with the problem, then go to the person.

And then only those things. really feel like you've done all of those things and you have people consistently executing, then you can look at the process and see if you want to redefine it. But only do that. Once, you've been able to consistently get all of the other pieces in place. And usually you need to do that first. And those little processes that you like tweaking because you're an entrepreneur, you're like fucking with things actually don't need to be changed. I can't tell you the amount of times that like I can usually tell if someone's like more

successful or like successful just from like an initial conversation because of how willing they are to break shit, right? Like the people who are more consistent make more money. They continue to rinse and repeat until they are bored to death. And then they keep going and doing it again. Because honestly, that's what it is. Like marketing is new, business is better. Right? You don't want to market better because better doesn't sound very good. New sounds good. New and different is what brings people in. But the same and getting better at doing the same thing is what make businesses better. And so it's one of those hard dichotomies as an entrepreneur because you want to because we are usually promoters, like we making like making big white things, attracting attention,

et cetera. But like the thing that you're usually selling just needs to improve. And that's it. And that's not sexy. And that takes 1% improvements. That takes looking through recordings of salespeople and listening to whether they're labeling the pain, listening to whether they're asking for the sale, listening to whether they overcame obstacles and actually tried. Right. It's like, Are they actually making the calls? It's looking through their phone record to see how many calls a day they were making. Right? It's looking inside of your trainers.

If you have a platform for the trainer to text or the writing hand or ring cars and make sure that they're actually doing it, right? Looking to make sure that the phone that you have at the gym where you record all of your ads on a regular basis is actually full and being done. Right. It's just looking. And most people don't do that because they're too busy being, you know, lifestyle entrepreneurs and taking pictures on Instagram about how successful they are. So don't be those people.

I hope that makes sense in terms of problem solving from an approach. It's usually the big, ugly one, and it's usually the one you need to tackle. Look at the person. If you're 100% positive of the person, then look at the process. Usually you don't need to do that. And then the thing that gets you to scale is to do each of those five things and do them and maintain them so that you can go right back to the beginning and break it all over again as you scale.

So anyways, I hope you guys have an amazing Monday. That was something that was on my mind that I figured I would share, because it's the number one thing that I get messaged about is little problems that are obvious, that wants to look at. And so just be your own coach. Tell yourself what you would tell someone else who told you this. Pretend another gym owner has you the same questions. Usually you'll have the right answer. But anyways, drop a like, drop a comment. If you're on the podcast and you're listening, please drop a review. We always appreciate reviews. And have an amazing day. Keep being awesome and keep grinding because we're all in it together. So, lots of love and I'll catch soon. Bye.