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Hard work will not make you rich, which is why I get driven nuts by the amount of gurus and influencers and whatever who want to brag and say no one cannot work me, I'm the best in the world.

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Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, it's objectively a false, be so many people work 16 hours a day and just sleep and then work again and so then how are we defining hard work is just that you work in general.

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Congratulations, but if that's the metric that we're trying to use to say that you're good at working well then there has to be another metric because every single person on the planet works fucking 16 hours a day.

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Unless you start eating in a sleep which I think we can all agree is probably not a good idea.

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So so many people are working 16 hours a day, there has to be something else.

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Welcome to the game where we talk about how to sell more stuff to more people in more ways and build businesses worth owning.

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I'm trying to build a billion dollar thing with acquisition.com. I always wish pesos, musk and Buffett had documented their journey.

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So I'm doing it for the rest of us. Please share and enjoy.

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All right, so one of the things that grinds my gears about a lot of the people that I see on Instagram that you probably see too is this whole like no one can out work me mantra and a lot of the people that even espouse that are people that I like, but I really don't like negating objective reality and it's the same thing when someone's like I'm the best and you have to say you're the best because if you don't think you're the best then like it shows that you're not confident.

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To me, I don't take that at all as if someone's like I'm the best then I would say then why aren't you on fucking billboards. If you're the best that's what the best would look like you know what I mean.

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And so if no one can out work you I'm like you haven't met everyone and to be fair I've met fucking 20 people that cannot work you and and why are we bragging about work because work has nothing to do very little to do with the highest levels of the game.

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Right, like Warren Buffett talks about if he makes two good decisions a year he said a good year right and so how is it that one of the best investors one of the best business people in terms of measuring it by money which is how you measure business.

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Talks about how he does basically nothing reads five or six hours a day eats McDonald's and makes a couple good decisions a year. How is it that that guy is making so much more money than the people who are bragging about the fact that they work so hard.

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Huh now you can either say oh well Warren works by just consuming information okay or we think about like what creates output what creates effect so you have volume of activity right number of times you do a thing and then you have the leverage of the activity that you're doing.

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That's what creates the total output right and so in order to do anything you must do something right there has to be some level of energy that gets input into the system now the leverage that we have on that activity is going to dictate how much we get out of it and if we do a low leverage activity many many many times we might get more than a high

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leverage activity that gets done once but with enough leverage one move can do more than thousands of low leverage activity moves so for example if Kim Kardashian gets up there or the rock makes it post and says hey guys I just started this new X he will get more leverage

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from that one activity that one post then somebody who DMs 8000 people or 10000 people right and so was it that you can make the argument that the the rock you know worked harder maybe in building the audience again maybe but I think the point of why I hate the concept of no one cannot work me is that there are many ways to win the game and this is like the heart of why I want to make this video because if you would

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think about an amazing goal as a dragon to be slain all right just think about that even though it's a process and not a destination just bear with me if you are familiar with video games in any way when you create like a war party you have a group of people that are going to go go

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to quest or mission right you don't just have 10 paladins or guys who just have shields and swords you don't do that why because a good fighting strategy uses different tactics and different advantages so you've got a healer you've got a

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means that's really good at damage but can't take a lot of damage that you've got a paladin who's not as who can't hit his hard but he can take a lot of a lot of you know a lot of shots right you've got a you know a

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bone arrow person who does whatever X Y and Z right and so each of these characters has a role to play and it's because the sum of the parts is greater than an individual player right and so having five

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paladins is not as good as having a paladin a healer a direct damage caster and whatever and if you don't know what I'm talking about the point is that if you're playing football you don't have 10 running backs when you're playing baseball you don't have 10

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people with the exact same skill set you find people who have complimentary skills let that sink and so for a moment if you were to think like the entrepreneur really should be the coach of the team that is the role of the CEO is organizing

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the team to win the game right on the micro and the macro level the season and then making a dynasty long term whatever it is right and so the reason no one cannot work me is first off that it's

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objectively false because many people a outwork you today be out working in the past see you haven't met everyone indeed it doesn't

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fucking matter anyways all right that's why I don't like it so many people at work me I still make more money than them why are we talking about this like what's the point right and so what this

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realization has brought to me is that it's about organizing the pieces of the players on the field and have the well they play together that ultimately determines how good the team is like how many times have you seen the team with the all star that has the poor supporting cast get beat by the

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overall better team it happens all the time right and so a lot of entrepreneurs as I see them are trying to play the game like their the star player and they want to score all the points but they lose to apple

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because apples got a team right they got team players and they build a championship team that way by having complimentary skill sets and so this is the point I wanted to make we celebrate a specific action like work when it's really just saying oh look there's a paladin who can take a lot of hits cool

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that's not the only thing that's required to win there's other things that are required to win and so I think what is more valuable is to know what are each of the roles that exists within the business a be on the micro level is there one of these that you map to based on your characteristics and skill sets and then see what is my eventual evolution through entrepreneurship so we'll start at the beginning which is what are the players on the field so if you think about it by function right you've got somebody who has to promote

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who's got to be a good marketer they have to understand how to make things known across different platforms somebody's got to be good at that telling stories building a brand providing value to an audience that's what marketing is sales is being able to convert that raw attention and interest into a sale right and it depends on the type of business but that monetization could be through direct response ads sales pages video sales letters etc or it could be through which is pretty much anything that's physical products

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or software based that's low ticket or it's higher ticket and you have people to people hand in hand combat who know how to in the beginning sell and then later train how to sell and then later later lead people who train how to sell that's how you build the sales function so you have to have somebody who's good at that these are not necessarily the same people oftentimes they're not at all the same people right and most times marketing and sales seem similar because people were going to marketing sometimes are good sales but I've met really brilliant markets with second sales and we're really good sales people with second marketing right if you have both that's a good thing

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it's awesome but it's not it's not required then you've got somebody who understands product how do we make something beautiful the guy who started Shopify he's not CEO Shopify he said a product because that's his skill set he's he's a mage right he knows how to cast spells that's his thing or he's a running back and he's just really good at running these routes but he still needs blockers he still needs a quarterback to hand him the ball right he still needs you know offensive lineman whatever he has people who are in place to create a new product

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to create room for him to grow and succeed and so you've got the product guys right and you've got the experience people who are who are managing everything outside of the actual product itself like how do customers engage with us how can provide more value how can they're amazing experience how do we make sure they're hitting these models how do we make sure they're successful etc etc etc right what support can we offer them

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and this person who knows customer experience a customer success is not the same person who understands product and UX and design and whatever it is you know depending on the technical expertise that's required for whether it's a service or product that's a different game right which is different the guy knows how to close is different guy knows how to promote and so the bigger the enterprise gets the more specialized skill becomes the deeper the well of experience the people need to be they have to be more specialized in the beginning small business owners have to learn a little bit of everything because you are everything

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but that mantra will kill you and so when people are like I can't be outworked you're bragging about the wrong thing it should be like I can't be out recruited you're I mean I can't be out managed like that's that would be like no one can build a culture like me that's that's super high leverage across the organization no one can lead like me super high leverage across the organization

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but no one can out work me it's just an irrelevant activity mantra right you have to do some work sure and I'm not believe you guys know me I love working I work all the time but I would never claim that that no one works harder than me right there's a business owner that wanted to deal with us recently big business and he followed up with me four times in one day and then when we set the the time that we were going to talk you thought of the two or three more times before the call

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and then after the call he's followed up with me four or five times since then and like we're talking like repeated times and the first time reached out he's like hey you're free right now it's like no I'm free right now and he's text me now he's like you're free right now and I was like no not free right now and he's like all right can we talk later today and I was like no but we can talk tomorrow at this time and he's like okay that works and this guy is absolutely relentless and the reason he wanted to work with us adeguisage.com is because we have things that he does it but I'm telling you right now if I had his level of relentlessness and perspacacity we'd be

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10 times bigger than we are right now that's just not my vibe but I tend to have very good leverage with the activities that I do I spend tons of time writing a book in that book

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prints and tell scoppies forever you know what I mean and so it's a different way to play the game and so my main point here is that there are players on the field right whether you're talking sports whether you're talking to video game people who are in the arena and they have different skills and so level two of this one was knowing what what the skills are level two is knowing which player you are.

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And so in the middle run of this you end up segregating yourself to a portion of the business that you're an expert at that you're best at and so then you go deep on that skill because you become essentially CMO or chief sales officer chief product officer or or some people I've got a buddy mine who CEO of his business but he's really like CEO CFO he's really just a very good financial guy and he tends to run a business that's very complex financially so he has to be really good at that stuff and it's such it's very core to the business right and so with each of these dynamics the players look different.

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It's not about one player like being the champion here it's about how the team works together which then gets to the third level of this where if you want to flip it third level would be up here is that it's just about being the coach which is do I know how to recruit players my team like that's what the best thing about the best coaches do they're literally trying to head hunt the best players and they're trying to recruit the best people from college right like that's what the best coaches do so you're looking at the best young young talent look at what Google does think about their recruiting efforts.

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They've huge influxes and resources dedicated to getting the best and smartest people out of college right and they have another ring for the best and smartest people come out of business school and then another one is their very high level recruiting at the top of the executive level and so if you think about the parallels between sports and business they are almost the same in that way now mind you you can only have you know ten or love people on the field you might have ten thousand but if each of those players represents a function or department of the business it makes more sense.

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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 if you guys that you help me spread the words we cannot more entrepreneurs make more money feed their families make better products and have better experiences for their employees and customers the only way we do that is if you can rate and review and share this podcast so the single thing that I have to do is leave review but take ten seconds or one type of the top of the absolute world to me and more importantly it may change the world for someone else.

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When we move up the levels of entrepreneurship we need to make sure that we're playing the right game and that we're using the right metric to measure our success and so our activity in terms of number of activities that we are doing is a very new be measure of success in the beginning.

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Wormpuffit doesn't say I said a thousand emails today he doesn't talk like that because he's he's playing a different game and so if we want to think like billionaires we have to act like billionaires or rather if we want to act like billionaires we have to think like billionaires right and they're not thinking about you know Jeff

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bases like woke up before I am today now mind you I'm saying this to somebody who likes waking up early but I also will understand it's not required.

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I like it some of you guys vibe with that and that's cool but we can't be as superstitious about what matters waking up early doesn't matter going a bit late doesn't matter not sleeping a lot doesn't matter like none of those things matter the few things that matter are the inputs that go into the system that have the most leverage to create the most output that's it.

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And so the final level of this is being a coach is recruiting the top level executives and creating a farm system underneath the feed into the company that you have so you can have a sustained competitive advantage and create a dynasty for the team so you can create the best winning team every year and have the soft skills of creating culture of high performance so that you get the most out of every individual player and the difference between amazing coaching and mediocre or poor coaching is what would players do if they had no coach or leader.

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And then what would they do if they had the best coach and best leader the delta between those two is the value of the coach the value of the CEO and if CEO can come in and turn a business around even behemoths around in two three years behemoths one person can do that based on the standard that they set and the values that they stand for that delta between.

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Minimum level of effectiveness to keep my job and discretionary work which is the amount of work that I would do if I was maximally engaged as an employee that delta across the entire organization is your greatest leverage.

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And so if we want to build big businesses we have to talk like big business owners and know what that path looks like.

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In the beginning sure there's activity but the goal should be to get out of those activities as quickly as you can so that you can go recruit the players on the field and then from there rise above and create the culture on the team and you may know a lot about being an offensive wing or you may know a lot about being a defensive tackle because that was what you came up with right or came up on but if you if you look at even the trajectory of I like football because it's simple example you've got a defensive tackle who's amazing and then what does he do he can do.

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He comes back as a defensive lineman coach and then he becomes a defensive coordinator and then he becomes the head coach right so that in the head coach has to understand the whole game and so if you think about that trajectory the small business owner is the defensive tackle that also has to run the ball and figured out and it doesn't look good when he runs the ball you just have to run the ball long enough to win a couple games at the lowest levels of minor leagues right enough that people like this guy is pretty good I think I could help him out and then you recruit some better players and then you can do that.

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You run plays again against better teams right then eventually you do such a good job that you can retire and then you move up the ranks in that way right and so I wanted to make this because I grow frustrated with people touting the wrong things to the masses about what matters absolutely you need to do the work you need to put

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in all you minutes the only way you get better that is not my point but if you start claiming that you are the best you are you cannot be outworked you are you are making statements that you know are not true you know they're not true

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and I am not a big believer in saying false claims because then I lose trust in myself because then I feel like I'm lying and I am delusional because I have no evidence to support the fact that I am the hardest working and that I am the best.

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I don't think I'm the best I don't think I'm the hardest working I think we're pretty good I think we're pretty hard I just wouldn't say we're the best and so I think that if we can shift the mantra around this and then refocus it on the things that matter which are we have to get domain expertise we have to get sufficient domain expertise to get over a certain level then we have to be able to bring people on the team that can help us out whether it's to slay the dragon or win the game and then we work our way up the coaching ladder once we're off the field because you're no longer an individual contributor in your business anymore your managing people are doing the individual contributing and you work your way up until eventually you're

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a coach or if you're smart smart cookie you might have enough money that you own the team and then you hire a coach that's exactly what a business is from a large picture perspective apple is owned by shareholders and then the shareholders hire a board to oversee the head coach head coach to see you same thing the way you spend your time is the only thing that is controllable and the question is whether you were doing activities

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or how we define work is the important part of this if we define work as the amount of time allocated to activities that make us money directly or indirectly then yes people who work more in general will make more money in general but everyone only has the same hours of the day

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and I can promise you that many many many people like so if that's the case then anybody who only sleeps eight hours or only sleeps seven hours and works the remaining of hours of the day all of them would be tied for hardest working so then there has to be something else.

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Once you max out your hours worked there has to be another variable which is the leverage you get on the activities in the time you spend and that is my opinion where people should focus their attention.

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Now if you're a newbie and you can't get your ass off the couch and by all means figure out how to actually get your ass off the couch and do stuff but once you have tapped that out because that's a very easy hammer to hit once you figure it out I got to work more I got to work more sure but then there's only so many hours and so a boom and then very quickly you hit your capacity of work and so in order to increase your capacity you must increase the capacity

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you must increase the leverage you have on the activities you do. That is why I get so annoyed about no one can't work me because I might be all have the same hours and if the only argument you can make is that you sleep less which I don't think anyone would argue is a good idea long term for decision making.

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So you really just have your relative maximum of how many hours per day can I work relative to the amount of sleep that I can have to recover and okay great you've maximized that now what?

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Because then it comes okay well I've maximized every hour that I'm awake well I can do other activities that I've higher leverage what if some activity has a hundred times higher leverage do I still need to work 16 hours a day well what if I work 12 hours a day I get 4 hours back and I'm doing a hundred times leverage.

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Because it doesn't matter as much so then the reality is that you just need to figure out the activities that have the most leverage and do those once you know how to do something.

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You will give out the activities in reverse order of your efficacy if you want to be in terms of.

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If the goal we have is to maximize the amount of money we make in the shortest time horizon and when I say short I mean long but over a long time horizon.

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You want to give away the stuff you suck at first not necessarily the stuff that you enjoy the least the first because sometimes there are things that you are good at that you don't like doing that are required for you during this season of the business believe me there are many things that I do right now that are not my favorite things in the entire world.

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They are required for me right now and we will do what is required.

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I think about them in terms of what is my return on time for the activity.

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And so the lowest leverage activities are things that are done one time and are never repeated again and do not create more output.

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That's why fulfilling for customers especially in a service based business is almost always the lowest leverage activity.

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Now you can gain leverage on the activity if you are able to record it and create media from it because now same time gets multiplied right.

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The question for leverage of any activity is what do I get back for what I put in that's the core question and so if I can get multiple things back for the same time then I have more leverage on the activity.

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But as a rule of thumb the thing that provides the least value which you can also in a back of napkin way figure out by what can ever place from the marketplace at the cheapest price of the time that I spend.

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And so if you are and this is the actual thing that we do with the portfolio companies who are coming in a CEO who is going to work with acquisition.com works virtually every hour of every day when they come in almost everybody does.

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And so that's why again the whole out working thing is just silly to me.

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So everyone works the same hours sometimes they ask they're like well am I going to be working more like it's impossible for you to work more but you are going to be changing what you work on because that's the only lever we have is we have to change the nature of the activity you have there's only 24 hours.

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So you're taking 16 hours we're going to switch these nine out and we're going to plot these in with higher leverage activities that's the change that we're going to do.

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And so the way that we do that is we look at their calendars and we look at their org chart we were like what are they talking about like this is how you fucking grow business.

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You look at what they spend their time on and you see which of these activities are low leverage and you say look at the org chart you say is there anyone else in this org chart that we can hand these activities to.

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And if a large percentage of these activities are a certain type of thing and they don't exist in the org chart then it's a role that we need to hire.

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So it's the delegation thing that we can do when spread throughout the org and then it creates freeze up the entrepreneur to do more high leverage things or if they have figured out that the next hole in the business is that they really need a focus on the product then if a disproportionate time is focused on one thing that would fit cleanly in one role and we hire that role.

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And that is how the buying back of time happens in the business and the ideas the entrepreneur or the CEO needs to have the highest return on time out of anyone in the organization.

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So here we have the CEO needs to have the highest return on time out of anyone the organization because they need to always be solving the next problem.

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So as long as when they replace their time the activities they do with the new stuff once they freed up that nine hours builds the business even more then that trade will always work where people get in a trouble is where they trade the time they pay the person and then they don't refill their time clock up with stuff that's high leverage or higher leverage than what they just outsourced.

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And so the idea is you do want to always get your time back but you want to get the time back so that you can do high leverage activities that ultimately grow the business.