The Game with Alex Hormozi - The REAL job of the entrepreneur...and the SECRET to finding talent.🕺🏻 | Ep 96

Episode Date: January 3, 2019

"Our job as the entrepreneur is to maintain these high expectations." Today, Alex (@AlexHormozi) discusses the role of entrepreneurs and the importance of understanding the details of a challenge to create solutions. He also highlights the importance of believing in the impossible and pushing boundaries to achieve business 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:(0:29) - Role of entrepreneur: Maintain higher standards(2:34) - Business owner's solution to consolidate databases(3:59) - Believing in the impossible: High standards lead to success(11:44) - Unconventional thinking: Move up in gym lunch(13:05) - Scaling business: Find the right talentFollow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

What is going on, everybody? I've got a short little tidbit for you today. And it comes from, I've been diving super deep into entrepreneur books and kind of like history of entrepreneurship, like some of the huge startups, kind of studying those entrepreneurs, CEOs, you know, and now billionaires. And I, it brought into clarity one of the things that I think is difficult to define as an entrepreneur, which is like, what is your continued role, right? And so I call this the real job of the entrepreneur and the secret to finding talent.

And so, you know, for us as entrepreneurs, a lot of times the secret to growth is how quickly can we learn and acquire a new skill before giving it to someone else, right? Before we teach someone else how to do that thing so that we can move on to the next skill that we need to have. And there's there does reach a point where, and this is just, I'm telling you from our experience, and this is not necessarily for Jim's, but this hopefully you still find it valuable. is that there gets to a point where you want to bring people in who are better than you at the thing that you need. Right. So people who actually have experience doing this thing and they're better than you at it. And when you can find that, that's like the best case scenario. And so when that happens, what is the role of the entrepreneur at that point, right?

Because this is something that I've been trying to define for myself, which is like, okay, if we bring in, you know, Josh Giles for marketing, he is as good and he will probably become, you know, much better than I am in the market. Right? And so like what is what does my role shift into? And so this is really I think this is really interesting. And after reading all these like biographies this weekend, listening all these podcasts of billionaires, like this is just I've been deep diving into this. I think that the simplest way to say it is that for us, the entrepreneur, our role is to maintain higher standards than anyone else. So our role, our job is to maintain the highest standards out of anyone else. We are the ones who need to hold the bar. And what that looks like is a lot of times breaking beliefs around what is possible for your team. And so an example would be, so I was talking to an entrepreneur,

so we went to dinner with entrepreneurs that I met on a plane on the way home from Laguna. And he was sitting right next to me and he was like, oh, I own a tech company and blah, blah, blah. And he's in Austin here. And so we had dinner last night. And an example of that was he had, he's a whole bunch of engineers that build out, you know, his software and whatnot. And they had four different databases and they were like it's impossible for us to merge them right like we can't merge them um and he was like okay we need to do it in the next 60 days and all of his engineers said no and so not all of them but most of them said no and so um he actually on the spot let go of the two or three people who were the biggest naysayers and then he looked at the rest of his team he was like

here's your two months severance and he looked at the rest of his team and was like okay so if we're trying to build, if we're trying to consolidate these databases in 60 days, how do we do it? And so they again said, you know, it's really not possible. And so one by one, he was trying to break down, what does, what does that do? Because he's not a tech guy. He was like, okay, what does that wire do? What does this wire do? What does this wire do? Right? And he was able to, after having them systematically explain each of these things to him, he's like, well, why can't we do this? And they're like, I guess we could, but that'll probably take 16 hours. He's like, okay, well, you said it was impossible. So 16 hours. All right, let's do that. Okay.

And then what's the next thing, right? And they're like, well, that'll take, you know, two guys, three days. It's like, okay, cool. Well, then so we got 16 hours, then we got three days. All right, we're getting there, right? And so he was able to actually get the entire thing done, the databases, all four of them, consolidated into one within 30 days. And it was because he believed that it was possible, right?

And one of my favorite things from Elon Musk is when someone tells him that it's not possible to do something. It's not possible to build a car that's electric that's faster than gas. It's not possible to make it achievable on a certain level. He says, break it down to physics. That's what he's asked to, but he's like, break it down to physics. And it means like physically, why is it impossible? And usually when someone breaks it down to physics, it's not impossible, right?

It's just a limiting belief. And that goes to show you the level of what a super, super, super, super high entrepreneur like Elon Musk believes, is that he just doesn't really believe anything is impossible, right? Like, unless it's physics, like unless the loss of physics say that we can't do it, there's no reason we can't. And so as entrepreneurs, a lot of like, what we have to do is we have to, we really have to be the first to believe in the impossible, right? We have to think like, okay, how could I give every single customer a personalized video every single morning, right? Like, start asking these huge questions and thinking like, why is it impossible? Like, let's go from there.

Right. And so we have to maintain these standards that no one else will maintain, right? And so as we grow as a company, one of the interesting things is that, and this is, I'm partially making this from my team, because they don't have to watch all of our stuff, but they end up watching a lot of my stuff, is that in order to move up, right, in a company, and this is why the second half is in the secret to finding talent, right, real eagles, is that the person who's highest up in a department or division should be the person who has the highest standards, right? If I have somebody who's directing customer service, and Lily, this is nothing to do with you. I love you. You're awesome. But I'm saying as an example, if you had somebody who's directing customer service and they have standards that are, let's say, out of 100, their standards are 80, right?

And then there's somebody else who's below them who has standards that are 90 for what customer service should be. Like, how good should it be? How fast should we respond? How cordial should be? How knowledgeable should each of our, you know, represent? representatives be, right? And so if that person is a 90 and the person above them is the 80, that person is a 90 should be the one running the department because they are going to have a

higher standard of excellence than the person who's leading. And so me as the entrepreneur should identify that and say like, okay, you should be the one holding the mantle, right? You should be the one holding the torch. And so our job as the entrepreneur is to identify the people who have the highest standards, who are the ones who are like are sticklers, for everything being perfect, right, for being amazing. Like, why wasn't, like, great, that was good? How can we get better? Right?

Is having the people who ask those types of questions because those are the ones who are going to do the job that we can't do at a certain point because it is big, because the organization grows beyond me being able to handle every customer service call, me being able to handle every sales call, me being able to, you know, manage the product development, right?

Like all of those pieces, I need someone who's going to have as high of a standard of excellence as I do, right? Because obviously it's our company. As entrepreneurs, it's our company. It's our business. And we're going to care more about it than someone else does. But there is a point where you find people who care about that thing.

Hey, guys, love that you're listening to the podcast. If you ever want to have the video version of this, which usually has more effects, more visuals, more graphs, you know, drawn out stuff. Sometimes it can help hit the brain centers in different ways. You can check on my YouTube channel. It's absolutely free. Go check that out if that's what you are into. And if not, keep enjoying the show.

much as you do. And so our job is to maintain these really, really high expectations, right? That's our job. And then to break the beliefs of those who are underneath us in the organization who are following us to make them believe that it's possible, right? And ask the questions that are big and say, like, why not? Why can't we? Right?

Like why is that not possible? Why can't we? Here's another really good one that I, that I, a good story that illustrates us. So I think I may have told that. this, but I think it was something that broke my beliefs so thoroughly that I hope it breaks yours. So, a friend of mine, Brandi Poole and He owns Legie Boss, they had a huge campaign and it totally crushed. And it, I mean, like, it took off, right?

And so they, within, so within like a matter of a month and a half, they quadrupled their business. And they had a big business already. they had an eight-figure business already, and they quadrupled it, right? And so what had to happen is that he had to hire 30 support reps in 14 days. And so every single time, like every person up to that point when they were, like, if they were trying to build that department before this explosion had happened, they probably said, what's reasonable?

Like, what's reasonable for us to do? It would be reasonable for us to hire an onboard one or two people a week. You know, that might be a reason. And that's still a fast rate, right? That's fast. But that's reasonable. to believe. And so it doesn't take a super person to believe that that's possible, right? But he chose to believe that we, because of necessity, that we have to do this in 14 days. Otherwise, this huge thing

is going to blow up on our faces. And so he sat down and met with group interviews for 14 days and hired 30 customer service reps to maintain this huge explosion that happened and keep it where it needed to be. Right. And so a lot of questions are a lot of standards that we have to maintain as entrepreneurs are around speed, how quickly can something happen? Right? Some people believe that it can't happen that fast. Why? Break it down to physics.

Why can't we? Right? Cheryl Sandberg, who's the C-O-O of Facebook, oversaw the company going from, I think she had four employees underneath of her to 4,000 within 24 months. It's possible, right? It's possible. And so we as the entrepreneurs have to believe that and then break the beliefs of those underneath of us. And that's a speed. That's, that's, that's all that I just talked about is,

is, is beliefs around speed and how high of a standard while I maintain as how quickly can we achieve the goals that we're setting out to achieve, right? Another one would be around like product excellence. Like, how good can it be, right? And so, um, like an example of that would be, uh, you know, if we're coming out with, like, the concept of us doing beta tests for anything is completely like novel. I don't know anyone in, in our space at least, who even does that, right? Not really. Not in a measurable way. Otherwise, they're just using as a marketing play. But like really legitimate, like, okay, let's take the best people. Let's consolidate the information. Let's modularize it. Let's provide it to people who aren't doing well. And let's see how

they do it in a measurable way using the same fulfillment methods that we were planning on using. And if they don't achieve the outcome, then we failed. And we need to do it again. And we need to do it get and how many times you need to do it? I don't care until it's right. And so it's like having those beliefs at the end of the day is the real job of us as entrepreneurs is like how high the standard can I maintain for my company and our products and our delivery and how amazing can our customer service be. And for every person who tells you it's not possible, ask them, break it down to physics. Why not? Why is it? Why is it impossible? Right? It's not possible given the belief set that you have right now, given your experience that you have behind you, but that experience

that you have behind you has in no way any impact on what is possible, right? And making people believe that. And so if you want to move up in gym launch, here's my little plug for our for employees, you want to move up in gym launch. Like you have to believe in the impossible more so that anyone else does. You have to have a higher standard of excellence of how quickly things can get done and how well they can get done because most of the time it's just our belief. that stop us, right? And so a lot of us have these goals and we say, I want to hit this by by next year, right? And then the question is, why can't we do it in two months? Like break it down to physics. Why can't we do it in two months? What would need to happen for us to achieve

that in eight weeks? Why not? Right? And so we ask those types of questions, and a lot of times it is asking the right questions, you get the right answers because it's not the conventional answers because conventional answers are usually conventional wisdom and conventional wisdom is just wrong, right? Because that's why most people have conventional results, which is why everyone has this fierce competition in the middle because no one knows because everyone's following conventional wisdom, right? So you need to be unconventional because you have to have the strongest beliefs out of everyone else in your company about what is possible, right? And it's everything, right? And that's our job, is to continue to break

our own beliefs and then broke those of our team and those underneath of us. And then finding the people, finding the true players who believe what we believe. And then they can then translate that conviction over to their teams and break those beliefs on your behalf. And that's really how you're able to scale a company at a fast rate and then maintain a level of excellence because one of the hardest things as you scale is maintaining quality of service, quality of product, quality of all these things. And so anyways, I hope this, I hope that you found that's valuable for you in terms of growing your gyms and whatnot and finding and identifying talent is you need someone who believes more in customer service than you do, who's who's stronger

in that than you are, who believes that like how high of quality should it be? And if they believe that it should be higher than you believe, then you found the right person, right? And who's constantly questioning, how can we make this better? Why can't we? Right. If you can throw like and you know maybe even drop a comment for feeling super generous I appreciate it but anyways that is what I think as as we continue to evolve it's no longer about skills for for me that I need to acquire it's more about how can I continue to push the limits of what's possible and then make those who are underneath of us believe that when I say underneath those I mean Orchard not underneath it any other way but really those who are side by side with us

walking this journey along with us to the promised land. Like how can I get them to believe what I believe? So anyways, guys, have an amazing day. Have an amazing Monday. And for those of you who are Jim Lords, the Super Bowl is on Friday. Be there. All right.

Bye.