The Game with Alex Hormozi - Sometimes you have to go SLOW to go FAST>>>And how great ideas will KILL your business ☠️☠️☠️☠️ | Ep 97

Episode Date: January 11, 2019

"Sometimes the problems don't manifest the way that would be obvious." Today, Alex (@AlexHormozi) discusses the importance of focusing on the big domino and prioritizing tasks to grow a business. He also emphasizes managing stress and anxiety, saying no to activities that do not move the business forward, and making the most of time to achieve growth and profitability.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:(1:13) - Think strategically for entrepreneurial benefits(2:27) - Prioritize time and attention for business benefits(3:54) - Maximize productivity and reduce anxiety as an entrepreneur(7:11) - Maximize efficiency: get the most out of time(8:57) - Explore gym growth and retention strategies(10:23) - Focus on retention to grow your businessFollow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

Sometimes you have to go slow to go fast. One of the real issues that plagues entrepreneurs, especially as you're starting out, and I dealt with this, and I still continue to deal with this, is that there are so many things that can move your business forward. It's difficult to pick. And so a lot of times we get lost in the busy work

of going from thing to thing to thing to thing to thing. And so one of the, I think, most telling stories that influence my perspective on this has been, so Tim Ferriss had a, somebody asked him at one of his events, you know, what, you know, what does your normal day look like? And he said, you know, I think you'd be incredibly bored to see what my normal day looks like, because most of the time is like, I wake up, I meditate, I go for, you know, I work out, I drink my kombucha or whatever. And he's like, I usually spend three to four hours just thinking about my business and about what I'm going to do.

And what I'm trying to find is not all the things that I have to do, but what's the one thing, the big domino, that if I push that one domino down, it makes all of the other things that I have left to do, either accomplishes them or makes them irrelevant. And I think that's incredibly telling because as we grow as entrepreneurs and as the, you know, the businesses that we have underneath of us grow, I know Sarah Gousson asked this a while ago. She's like, you know, my gym is really running on its own for the most part. like I'm trying to figure out what I need to do. And what happens is that as you grow, what you need to do goes down, but what you need

to think about what you're going to do goes up. And so there's only one of you, right? There's only one of you. And that means that there's a really limited amount of things that only one person can do, right? Like we have teams now, and I can say this now from experience because we have the size team that we do that like so many more things can get done at a much larger scale and a much faster rate because we have a team, right? But if you are the sole entrepreneur, right, and you're, then you're really the one who drives most of these, you know, projects forwards, the difficulty

is when you write down or you come back from a mastermind, right, and you're like, oh, I have, I have two pages worth of ideas, right? The reality is that most of them won't get done, but what I will push to you or what I'll posit is that most of them should not get done. And so my point here is I had a mentor early on and he said sometimes because I used to I used to just always want to just work work work work work work work right and so he'd be like Alejandro he's like slow down it's like sometimes you have to go slow to go fast and I always like it always like it always trip me up when you say stuff like that I'd be like all right sage guru like what does that even mean he's like sometimes you got to go slow to go fast and it's the same same type of saying is like

you should spend three hours or six hours sharpening your blade and only an hour cut it right And so if you were to look at my day and like what my weeks look like, I would say I do an astonishingly small amount of work. But what we focus on or what I focus the work on, I try to make sure that it is the biggest ball that I can personally move forward. Right. So like I have tons of requests of me all the time from clients, from employees, from other managers, directors, et cetera, that come and ask for my time. right and so they're like hey can you build this thing out can you make these videos for this can you make us a training on this can you like there's all of these different things and a hundred percent of them would make our business better right but as the entrepreneur you have the one resource you have which is time

and attention right i'm going to just put those together and so if i have all of these requests that are coming in rather than being reactive and thinking like oh i have to start this one and then another one comes like i have to start this one and you're constantly bouncing from the thing to thing and then either you're a more effective entrepreneur and you're getting all of these little things done, right, and they're all moving the ball forward a little bit, a little bit at a time, or you just step back and look at everything and then think which one of these things will make me the most money and give me the highest return on my time and attention. And a lot of times when you look at that whole list, you can easily cross out three quarters of it

right off the bat. And that's like one of the keys to keeping your anxiety low as an entrepreneur, because like the higher up you get, the more, the more noisy life becomes, right? And so dealing with stress and dealing with anxiety and dealing with pools on your attention is like a real skill that you need to develop. And a lot of times it comes from being able to say no. And it's not that you're saying, no, this idea is not good. And I want to be clear about that because almost 100% of the ideas that I get that potentially need me, you know, to implement or advise or whatever on, would make our business more money. But the question is, are you doing things that would make your business this much more money instead of doing the one thing that will

make your business this much more money? Real quick, guys, you guys already know that I don't run any ads on this and I don't sell anything. And so the only ask that I can ever have of you guys that help me spread the words so we can out more entrepreneurs, make more money, feed their families, make better products and have better experiences for their employees and customers. And the only way we do that is if you can rate and review and share this podcast. So the single thing that I ask you do is you can just leave a review. It'll take you 10 seconds or one type of the thumb. It would mean the absolute world to me.

And more importantly, it may change the world for someone else. And losing sight of that because usually the one that's this big, a lot of times requires more effort. And so we get busy doing these little fix-its rather than focusing on the big thing, right? And so when I, a lot of times when I have an entrepreneur who come in and like, you know, I'll do like sort of a, I don't want to say coaching call because it's not part of our business. But like I have people who right now are doing between 5 and 15 million that I have a regular communication cycle with. And I talk to them about business. Most of the time the conversations are astonishingly simple. I'm just saying like, cool, where are you at right now?

What's the biggest, like, what's the major bottleneck that you have? Is it like, and I just go through it? I'm like, is it lead gen? Is it getting people to show? Is it getting people to give you money? Is it like, is your insurance the issue? So fulfillment related? Like, what's the problem?

Right? And then once we identify what the problem is based off of numbers, not off emotions, but based off of numbers, then we say, cool, ignore everything else that could probably make you more money. Just do that. Right. And so sometimes it takes someone from the outside to give you the clarity or the permission to say no to everything else that is being asked of you.

But the round is like the really effective entrepreneurs have the same amount of time that every other entrepreneur has. And the only thing that they're doing is they're doing activities that are more productive that will move the ball forward much further than their counterparts and the people who are competing against them. And so it's like everyone has the same hours. And so you have to ask yourself like, and I ask this like myself all the time. So I'm not saying like I'm separate than you like we're together in this. Like, okay, Richard Branson has the same 24 hours that I do. and he's making way more than I. Right?

So what is he doing with his time that I'm not doing with my time? And a lot of that comes from, okay, what are all the things that I don't need to do? And what's the one thing that I do need to do? That will actually move me way further forward than everyone else. And if you look at that, your anxiety goes down and then your clarity and what the actual objective of what your day is supposed to be becomes really clear. And then when things get clear, things get easy. Right.

A lot of times when we have these struggles, I'm like, what am I supposed to do? like I feel so busy, I'm so pooled. Like whenever you have that anxiety of like I feel like I have so many things to do, slow down. Look. Like, look around. Look at your business. Look at the big picture.

What am I struggling with? Is it lead generation? Is it getting people to show? Is it getting people to give me money? Is it getting them an amazing experience? Is it getting them to stay? That's it. Like, which one is it?

And if like, and when you look at those, then you can look at all the projects. you have on your plate and forget about all of the ones that aren't related to the one that you have an issue with. And then when you do, just do that one. That's it. And you will make way more money because you're only focusing on the things that matter, right? And that's how you're more effective. And that's how everyone's like, how do they get so much stuff down?

We don't actually get more down than anyone else does, right? We just get the things that matter done more than everyone else does. I mean, we sit on top of a community of a thousand plus gyms who have ideas for us to do every day. You know what I mean? I have a million ideas that get shot to me every single day from our own community and our employees. And so sifting through that to say like, then how is it that we make gyms the most money more than everyone else is because we have an ability to say no to most things. Not that it's not valuable, not that it wouldn't work. It's just that of all of the opportunities, this is the one that we've identified as the highest impact.

And that's what we're going to focus on. So anyways, if you feel spread thin or you're like, I'm not sure what I need to do, slow down, look around, look at those, that pipeline of how your money comes in, the generation lead, nurturer, sales fulfillment, and the resale retention, right? Look at all of those different things and figure out which one is the issue, right? And sometimes the problems don't manifest the way that would be obvious, right? And so right now, I can't keep, like my gym won't grow, right? Sometimes everyone looks at acquisition, right?

And acquisition for a lot of people means like getting people in the door and getting cash flow, which is important. But if the issue is really that everyone keeps falling off the back end, which is why you need so many people to come in on the front end, your actual processes for acquisition might be actually pretty strong. It might be actually what's keeping you in business. But the thing that's keeping you out of growth is not your acquisition system. That's not where you should be focusing. It should be focusing on the retention. piece, right? On getting, on cutting down that churn so that all of this effort you're putting into acquisition that you're really good at now can actually grow the business. And so taking a

second to look at it and then really say like which one of these things is the is the bottleneck to my growth, which is the hole in my bucket. And then focus on that. Put the other ones on your 80, 20 like, okay, if we go red line on this on acquisition, we might be able to hit, you know, 80 sales this month. But if we go like blue line. on acquisition. Maybe we hit 40. Okay, are we, are we cash flow good enough to be able to just do 40 so that I can focus all of my attention on the real hole that's stopping growth? And then if you take a month and you fix that hole, then you can go red line on your acquisition again, but then everyone sticks. Right. And if you look at your your business piecewise like that, and then you

focus your time and attention in the effective ways, then all of a sudden your life gets less noisy, your anxiety goes down, and then all of a sudden, all of these things that could benefit your business become irrelevant, because the things that actually are going to grow your business become really simple and the only things you need to do. So anyways, guys, as my little tidbit for today, sometimes you've got to go slow to go fast. And just think about all the things that, like, I'm giving you permission to say no to all of these things that are great ideas. They're awesome ideas and they will all grow your business, but not as much as the one that's your big hole and just focus on that all right guys have an amazing day and

i'll catch you guys on the flip side hi you guys on the flip side hi